Setback in Leeds Traveller site battle - Yorkshire

From the Yorkshire Evening Post

A three-year battle with a Leeds landowner who wanted to turn green field land into a Traveller camp looks set to continue, after the city council delayed a decision on clearing the site.

Residents in Leadwell Lane, Robin Hood, claim they have faced years of nuisance after a landowner bought grassland yards behind their rural Leeds homes, filled it with hard standing and fenced it off – all without planning consent.

After being pulled up by enforcement officers, he failed in several bids to get permission to house Travellers. A failure to serve a court order on him led to local politicians asking the council’s Nuisance and Derelict Sites Steering Group to get permission to repair the land, and seek to regain the costs from the unnamed landowner – a decision that was delayed on Tuesday.

Resident Margaret Ellis, 51, said: “It needs to be sorted, life’s been an absolute misery. It’s hard to be positive when every time we get a victory they keep coming back.”

Residents are also upset that an adjoining children’s play area, which was council-funded and painted by locals themselves, now sits alongside a barren, weed-filled site.

Branding it an “eyesore”, local Labour councillor Lisa Mulherin said: “Residents have suffered long enough.” A council spokeswoman said: “Officers will visit the site shortly to assess what can be done and then consider what action may need to be taken.”