Court option over Travellers’ ‘sit-in’ - Leicestershire

A COUNCIL could go to court to remove families from a controversial Travellers’ site if an appeal against their eviction is upheld.

Kettering Borough Council served enforcement notices in November to five families currently at the Greenfields site in Oxendon Road, Braybrooke, giving them six months to vacate the land.

Previously the council’s planning committee had unanimously refused a retrospective application to turn the farmland in Greenfields into a residential site because it said the families had not proved a traveller site was needed. Planners also said the development would damage the land and its isolated location would mean resident families would be dependent on vehicles to get anywhere.

The Travellers have since appealed against the enforcement notices.

The council says it is now ready to make its next move. If the Travellers’ appeal is successful the council will apply to the County Court or High Court to stop mobile homes being put on several plots on the site and to prohibit the land being used for residential use.

Council officers recommended that the council pursue court action after the appeal process has finished, and that was endorsed by the authority’s planning committee on Tuesday.

It is another blow to Sherry Gaskin, a Romany Gypsy living on the field with her husband Albert and their two children.

She said: “To the council it’s just a piece of land, but to us it’s our life. It’s our future and the future for my children.

“If we get moved off we will have to find another patch of land or a roadside as we’ve got nowhere else to go. We’d like to sit down with the council and try to talk over an agreement. We’re not unreasonable, we just want a place to stay.”

A report to Tuesday’s meeting revealed that going down the court route might carry a considerable cost, especially if the families also appeal against any injunction.

Failure to comply with any injunction could lead to imprisonment or seizing of property.

Cllr Alison Wiley, who represents the Welland ward where Greenfields is based, said: “There is still concern from local residents. We have given them assurances that we are going to take action on it as a council and this report indicates that exactly.

“Planning laws are there for a reason and not to be broken and we will uphold it vigorously.”

The council has said the appeal hearing against the enforcement action is likely to take place at the end of May.