Travellers served with possession order

John Fareham and John Abbott report that Hull City Council have secured a court order granting the Council immediate possession of the former William Gee playing fields occupied until recently by travellers and that steps are in hand to secure the site against further incursions.

At 10 am on Wednesday August 1st Hull City Council went to court, as we had been planning it should do before the travellers left, and gained immediate possession of the site on the basis that the travellers will not be allowed back for three months. We have also been enquiring of the officers what is to be done about the clearing up of bags of rubbish and less salubrious materials. We were told that the order to send in a cleaning crew had been placed and would be acted upon within 48 hours, but that a 2-ton block of concrete would be placed where it would stop travellers getting onto the site. Both of us have of course been asking the officers to move as quickly as they can to make the site secure as this contingent of travellers have been moving rapidly from one site to another.

YPI application rejected

John Fareham and John Abbott report that the planning application to build 61 houses on the former YPI front car park has now been rejected by Hull City Council’s Planning Committee.

The officers’ recommendation to Committee was for the plan to be approved.  Nevertheless the arguments long advanced by local residents – too many people, loss of amenity, the prospect of parking problems – weighed more heavily with the Committee and the application was rejected unanimously, as I proposed and Labour’s Councillor Julia Conner seconded, slightly ahead of several others including Alan Clark who were attempting to do so. Obviously the applicants retain the right to appeal; if they choose to do so, we will of course let local residents nearby know and give details of how to appeal and who to appeal to.

Kelvin travellers again

John Fareham and John Abbott report that the Council went to court to remove travellers from their unauthorised encampment on the former William Gee playing fields on Wednesday August 1^st.

John Fareham says, “It was our understanding that the officers will be applying for immediate possession of the site.  Prior discussion of the problem suggested that the Council might seek to have the possession order be sufficiently generous to the Council and to local residents in terms of how long it applied and how wide an area it covered. This is, of course, not the first time travellers have used this site or others nearby in recent years, and we do of course sympathise with those local residents whose residential amenity has been disturbed by the sound of travellers using generators and other machinery.”

Hotham Road North trees

John Fareham and John Abbott have secured work to remove the plants that were growing around the roots of Hotham Road North.

We have received a number of complaints about this matter from local residents, not just in Hotham Road North but elsewhere.  We have therefore taken photographs of these intrusive plants and have submitted them to the officers. They have passed the task on to the Council’s tree section. We understand they in turn will be scheduling the pruning to be done shortly. It goes without saying that John and I will continue to pursue this matter until we secure an appropriate outcome. We will also refer that matter to the officers again in the event of more such plants turning up.

Travellers on Kelvin playing fields

John Fareham and John Abbott worked to remove the unauthorised traveller incursion on the site of the future Kelvin Hall School playing fields.

The travellers began arriving early in the evening of Tuesday July 17^th and, whilst there was some doubt as to whether they used force to gain access to the site, there was no doubt in our minds or those of local residents, especially those subject to noise nuisance from generators, as to whether they should still have been there. We therefore got in touch with various officers of the Council to urge them to carry out such actions as would enable eviction proceedings to go to court with a good chance of success by all means but to do them as expeditiously as they can and to move these travellers on as soon as the law would allow.

Kenilworth Avenue street light

John Fareham and John Abbott have secured the repair of a malfunctioning street light on Kenilworth Avenue that was shining in broad daylight.

We were out delivering newsletters when we noticed that this street light was shining at an hour of the day when most people might have expected to be at work.  We therefore referred the matter to the officers. We have since been assured that an order was placed for the work and that it was done within five working days. We have also been told that someone will, by the time you read this, have gone back to check that the repair work had been carried out and that the street light in question now comes on and goes off when it should.  Of course, if we see any other street lights not working, or if local residents tell us about one that isn’t, we will call those problems in and follow them up till they are resolved.

YPI access road enforcement

John Fareham and John Abbott have secured enforcement action on the YPI in respect of the access road, requiring it to be made two-way along its entire length.

The notice was served on YPI after not hearing from them when they were going to start work on the road. A design for the changes had already been sent to the Council and approved in March. The notice was served on 21^st June and takes formal effect on 24^th July unless YPI choose to appeal.  If they don’t they have two months in which to get the work done. We have both, however, seen vehicles on site and men at work suggesting the YPI may already be taking steps to comply with the notice.

County Road North waste land as allotments

John Fareham and John Abbott are providing funding for the conversion of the Council’s patch of open land on County Road North into allotments.

We were both happy to provide Community Initiative funds for this purpose. Bringing this piece of land back into use for something proper helps meet the demand for more allotments. It also goes some way towards guaranteeing that this land will never get into the mess local residents first told us about. (This was, as readers may recall, because the officers did not know which part of the Council owned it.) There may not be many allotments on this land, but the weeds that used to cover it will be Public Enemy Number One to its new users. We might well have the temerity to call that a result.