Bid to remove Gypsy site from Newport plan fails

From the South Wales Argus

A BID to have a proposed Gypsy and Traveller site removed from the future development plan for Newport failed at a meeting of full council last night.

That was despite doubts aired over whether or not Gypsy families want to live on a large proposed site in the south of Newport, which the meeting heard could have as many as 129 caravans stationed on it.

Ringland Labour councillor Malcolm Linton attempted to have the Road Safety Site at Hartridge Farm Road removed from the local development plan (LDP) as a Gypsy and Traveller site.

But the motion failed, with 31 councillors voting against it and seven councillors voting for, and seven abstentions.

The overall revised LDP was approved to go to a six-week public consultation, with 43 voting for it, one against and at least two abstentions.

The votes came after the leader of Newport council, Bob Bright, whose Ringland ward covers Hartridge Farm Road, told councillors that a BBC programme found “that there are still some questions and doubt that families want to go to this site”.

Cllr Bright also said there had been a large number of accidents on that road, while Labour councillor Emma Corten, also for Ringland, claimed that Travellers at an illegal camp near the now Llanwern High School site were “pelted with rocks and stones”

a few years ago. But councillors were informed that if they voted to remove the site from the LDP the whole plan would not be sound.

Last night’s meeting came after the 2012 consultation into the controversial Gypsy and Traveller site issue by a scrutiny committee of councillors.

Following responses from residents and officer input, councillors opted for a site at Hartridge Farm Road as a preferred residential site, land at Celtic Way as a preferred transit site and the former Ringland allotments as a contingency.