Plans for Leeds Traveller site injunction shelved - Yorkshire

From the Yorkshire Evening Post

Plans for a third injunction to prevent Travellers setting up unauthorised camps on land in Leeds have been shelved.

The idea of another Traveller injunction, which would make unauthorised camps on land in areas of Middleton illegal, will not be followed up despite a number of camps in the area in recent months.

Unauthorised camps are only subject to civil law, with eviction notices lasting three months, meaning groups often circulate sites until notices run out, costing Leeds City Council £2m in legal and clean-up fees since 2004.

The Travellers that were seen on land in Throstle Road and Middleton Park Avenue this year have been placed on land in Bath Road, Holbeck, under a pioneering temporary agreement with the council.

Coun Peter Gruen, the council’s member for neighbourhoods and housing, said: “I think for the time being, because we have found this site and we are tolerating the same Travellers that were crisscrossing Middleton, we have decided not to do anything.

“We have got the injunction up our sleeves and I am prepared to go back to it.”

He said the strengthening of boundaries around the area’s green space, through security gates and soil mounds, will be done to deter Travellers.

There are currently two injunctions in the city, one in Burley and one in Armley and Wortley, as the council looks to house more Leeds-based Travellers at the city’s permanent traveller site, with plans to expand Cottingley Springs from 41 to 52 pitches looking set to go ahead next year.

Dot Mounteney, chairman of Middleton Community Group, said: “There’s not a lot we can do is there? We don’t mind if they cleaned up and looked after it but they don’t.”

She said that strengthening boundaries wont make a difference as security has been breached on land in the past.

But in a letter to councillors about the second Leeds injunction, Helen Jones, chief executive officer at Leeds Gypsy and Traveller Exchange, said they are making choices for families “desperately limited” and don’t offer them alternatives.