Travellers invading local park.

On our local news, a school has to cancel its Sports Day because travellers had pitched up on their ground!

BlueBelle

They are moved on within a very short time here why don’t the police move them on from your park ?
It’s a shame because most are not bad people but they all get tarred with the same brush and a lot are not travellers at all but modern day drop outs
Real travellers and Romany s have much higher standards

The council need a court order to move them on...not eaily available on a weekend ....our local.park solved the problem with bollards .....the travellers never came again after installing them around 8 years ago

BlueBelle

They are moved on within a very short time here why don’t the police move them on from your park ?
It’s a shame because most are not bad people but they all get tarred with the same brush and a lot are not travellers at all but modern day drop outs
Real travellers and Romany s have much higher standards

It is just a guess, but maybe where you are there might already be injunctions (if that's the right word) in place, meaning that people can legally be moved off very quickly.

Based on how long it took to get such measures in place after the travellers were moved from the place I mentioned above, it seems to be a very long process!

You have my sympathy. This time of year two years ago, travellers moved onto land next to the estate where my son lives.

It was the start of an absolute nightmare for him and the other residents whose houses were closest to the camp, the start of several months of antisocial behaviour, threats of violence, damage to vehicles and property, thefts in broad daylight from back gardens, the dumping of electrical appliances and other unwanted item into the canal that ran between the 'camp' and the houses, untaxed vehicles coming and going at all times of the day and night ... .

I could go on, but unless you have experienced it, you probably can't begin to imagine the stress that it caused, people fearing what might happen in the night, that their (or their children's) bedroom window might get a brick through it, or fearing that something will have happened to their home while they were out. There were times when my son was so scared by what was happening that he would ask me to have our 2 year old GD for the night.

Regular police patrols started, but of course they only had any effect while the police were actually there!

As for the mess that was left behind, it is still being cleared now, more than 18 months after the travellers finally got moved on.

The majority of Irish travellers I worked with were housed in part of a large estate of council housing. It was close to the area their ancestors had stopped at when travelling was still possible. Families shared a trailer and travelled largely between June and September. Local schools were accepting and ran literacy, numeracy classes for parents, aunts, carers mist of whom left school at 11, if they’d attended at all.

Like every community, there were lovely people and less lovely. Families looked out for each other. It was vanishingly rare for children to need foster care

Infuriating for the locals. I don't know why the authorities can't take action.

Travellers seem to think they are entitled to continue their traditional life style in a transformed world where all public open spaces are scarce and costly to maintain. Many people would love to travel like a romantic old style gypsy but they know this is no longer possible.

Many many years ago my parents run a public house only to find a good dozen travellers were in the car park one morning.
My father told them to move on before the pub opens,they told him in typical gypo language to f... off
Big mistake.
The locals turned up with a large box of matches and gave them minutes to start shifting,or teh vans will be set alight,and they soon shifted.

No one is saying that these are bad people but, like all of us, they must keep within the law and it’s shocking that we have to pay to clear up after them. In the past they have been on the common near my house and left it in a disgusting state. Also while they’re there the antisocial behaviour prevents others from enjoying the area in the summer. I wouldn’t mind them coming if they just occupied a small section and moderated their noise and their language. We could “live and let live” with these people but not while they cost us so much money and stop us from enjoying our neighbourhood.

We do have a designated space for travellers with facilities, it is empty.

I find that astonishing! Having worked with the gypsy and traveller community the half a dozen places I liaised with were always full.

Roughly where are you, Sago?

We used to get them a lot but our council did a lot of work building earth humps around our local green spaces and put wooden posts into the ground in lots of places to stop access to open space it works really well and illegal incursions happen rarely now.

They are moved on within a very short time here why don’t the police move them on from your park ?
It’s a shame because most are not bad people but they all get tarred with the same brush and a lot are not travellers at all but modern day drop outs
Real travellers and Romany s have much higher standards

I agree it's a disgrace. My council spend £1,000 a month cleaning up after them. The money could be spent on better things

Happened near us last week, the children’s public paddling pool had to be closed, emptied and refilled, people were washing and defecating in it.
Section 61 invoked by council/police to move them, now they’re a few miles away to make more mess.

It’s disgraceful and really shouldn’t be allowed..

And it always seems worse in summer somehow.