Superdump turned into new Gypsy plot - Oxford

From the Oxford Mail

THE expansion of a Travellers site in Oxford is set to be completed in the next few months.

Building work is nearly finished on the creation of nine new plots at Redbridge Hollow.

The £1.86m expansion of the Traveller site is being developed in the spot previously dubbed the ‘superdump’, an area where flytippers left 3,000 tonnes of rubbish over two decades.

Gary Brewer, manager of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Gypsy and Traveller service, yesterday told Oxfordshire county councillors work on the land adjoining the current Redbridge Travellers site was being carried out.

Eight new plots with amenity blocks plus an extra facility for a family with a severely disabled child are being created.

Speaking at the Oxfordshire County Council safer and stronger communities scrutiny committee yesterday, Mr Brewer said the building work was being financed by a central government grant.

The buildings are intended to be used as kitchen or day rooms. They consist of one room containing cupboards, plug sockets and a sink and also have separate toilets and shower rooms.

Mr Brewer told the committee: “The land is worthless. No-one wants it – we did look at giving it to a business.

“So we thought, okay, this site is overcrowded, let’s build additional plots.”

He said families could travel for up to six months of the year and then return to the site as long as they kept the county council aware of their plans.

The committee was shown photographs of the structures being built in contrast to the piles of fly-tipped rubbish that had accumulated there.

In 2008 the so-called ‘superdump’ covered an area of 926sq m. The mountain of waste was removed at a cost of £300,000 in February 2010.

Building work on the blocks started in December last year and is expected to be completed this summer.

In July 2010 the cost of security at the site to prevent further fly tipping was revealed by the Oxford Mail to be £130,000 per year.

Kennington Parish Council chairman Peter Biggs said: “It was a tip before and it is good use of the land to put homes on it.

“The people of Kennington will just shrug their shoulders at the development and get on with their lives.

“We had this put on us all those years ago and people have got used to it.”