Latest on traveller policy

John Fareham and John Abbott continue to work with others for an adequate official response to future traveller incursions on Bricknell Estate.

West Area Committee – where others from different parties have also been having issues with travellers – made a referral to Community Safety Overview and Scrutiny Commission suggesting that the timings taken to deal with the next few traveller incursions be recorded and compared.  This we approve of – Wyke Area Team’s officers moved rapidly last year, but it would not be in the interest of any area to have it thought that the response there was any less rapid, and there’s nothing like peer pressure.  That said, it also came to light that a flowchart detailing the police and officer response to future traveller incursions was due to come to Wyke Area Committee and other Council bodies in the near future but had been pulled so that it could be checked for legality.  We were, however, also able to advise our West Area colleagues that last time the travellers turned up our legal position had been strengthened by their forcing the locks on the Aneurin Bevan Lodge site and that the same principle – traveller damage equals easier win in court – could be put to work elsewhere.