Northey Road Travellers’ camp rejected - Cambridgeshire

From Peterborough Telegraph

Plans to build a Travellers’ camp site next to a major heritage attraction in Peterborough have been quashed.

The proposals involved creating a site to take two static caravans and two touring vans in a field in Northey Road, beside the world-renowned Bronze Age Flag Fen centre.

Concern that undiscovered ancient remains could be destroyed by building work and that rural views would be ruined for visitors topped a list of objections raised at the meeting of Peterborough City Council’s planning committee.

Members were told a Romany-Gypsy family, made up of husband, wife, children and grandmother, hoped to move from the city’s Oxney Road caravan site to live on the plot within the southern boundary of Flag Fen, on land policed by English Heritage as a Scheduled Ancient Monument (SAM).

Committee member Councillor Chris Ash, who represents Dogsthorpe, urged the plans be rejected.

He said: “This site is unique in the country and I think that if we were to allow development on it of any sort it could course harm and that is significant to overcome the need of the family to live there.

“If damage is done it’s done for life and that would be something very difficult to have to live with.”

Cllr Nigel North, said: “We are short of Travellers’ sites and it is important to find sustainable sites, but I think to allow development within the Flag Fen SAM could cause future harm.”

Nick Harding, the council’s group manager for planning, said: “The shortage of Gypsy and Traveller pitches is a local issue and Flag Fen is of national importance, that rightfully trumps local matters.”

Barrister Marc Willers, who represented the Romany family at the meeting, said the applicant, named only as Mr Gray, had bought the Northey Road land before Flag Fen had been made a Scheduled Ancient Monument last March.

Flag Fen

Flag Fen, a 20-acre site in The Droveway, off Northey Road, is one of Europe’s richest Bronze Age sites.

Archaeological digs in the 1980s, funded by English Heritage, uncovered a timber structures more than 3,000 years old.

Later finds have led experts to liken Flag Fen’s historical worth to Stonehenge and hundreds of Bronze Age relics have been recovered from the fen soil.