Warning as Travellers are told they can stay - Cambridgeshire

From Cambridge News

Travellers have been allowed to stay on six sites around a village for another 18 months – while a seventh has been given permanent consent.

Members of South Cambridgeshire District Council’s planning committee yesterday voted to allow the families to stay on plots in Willingham despite the parish council claiming the large travelling population was putting “intolerable” pressure on local services.

The decision to grant permanent permission for the final application, for land at Cadwin Field, sparked mixed reactions – with one traveller who got 18 months shouting that it was “unfair” and Cllr Ray Manning, the district council leader, putting his head in his hands.

Cllr Manning, who represents Willingham, had argued all the sites should get one-and-a-half years in the expectation that new pitches elsewhere could be identified in the meantime, allowing the pressure on the village to be relieved.

The ratio of travellers to settled residents in Willingham is four times the district average, and Cllr Phil King, vice-chairman of the parish council, told the meeting that it may be one of the highest in the country.

He said one in 10 primary school pupils were Travellers and that many of them needed special help.

The village medical practice is also under pressure, he said, with some Travellers having little concept of the appointments system, and also being reluctant to have their children immunised.

Cllr King said: “There comes a point when the infrastructure simply cannot cope and I think we are pretty close to that, and that’s when you get the real problems and it spills into the streets.

“It’s some years ago that we had considerable violence over a period of time which related to these sorts of problems, which come from friction, which comes from there being more of a community than can be supported in a village the size of Willingham.”

Two of the sites are in Cadwin Field, four are in Meadow Road, and one is in Schole Road.

Liberal Democrats on the committee argued all the sites should get permanent consent because they had been there for some time – but could only persuade the rest of the panel about the seventh site, which was said to have “very little impact” on the landscape.