Croydon Council seeks High Court order in war against Travellers - London

From the Croydon Advertiser

COUNCIL lawyers are putting the finishing touches to plans to seek a court injunction banning Travellers from illegally camping anywhere in the borough.

The "get tough" stance is expected to be approved at Monday's meeting of the council cabinet and follows growing concern about damage and disruption caused by a specific group of Travellers.

Last year alone, the council had to deal with 83 illegal camps with council taxpayers footing a £128,000 bill to remove the camps and clear up afterwards.

The idea of an injunction on specific Travellers was first raised by council leader Mike Fisher last September when, referring to the mess they left, he branded them "a risk to public health".

This week Cllr Fisher said solicitors were looking at final details of an injunction application to try and ensure that any application made to the courts was watertight and would not be turned down.

He said any Travellers involved would have a right to object to any injunction application but the aim would be to impose a blanket ban on the groups stopping anywhere in the borough.

The ban is intended to apply to both council-owned land and sites in private ownership, with the owner's consent.

It is also hoped the terms of the injunction would enable extra names to be added to the banned list if it became necessary in the future.

Cllr Fisher said: "We want the initiative to kick off as soon as possible.

"We don't want to find ourselves in the situation we had last year when quite a large number of Travellers were coming into Croydon and we were playing a cat-and-mouse game with them.

"As soon as we moved them on they were coming back on to another piece of land."

An injunction would have an added benefit over existing eviction powers granted to local authorities because it could be granted for an indefinite period.

He added people whose lives had been disrupted by illegal camps were aggrieved by the mess Travellers left in their wake and angry that residents had to pick up the tab for the clean-up operation.