Legal Action to Remove Dundee Travellers

From the Evening Telegraph

Legal action is under way to remove Travellers from their latest unauthorised Dundee camp — where rubbish is already piling up.

The group are occupying land in Dundee Technology Park next to the former General Accident call centre, where the land already has piles of waste from building materials among the dozen caravans.

Now Aviva Investors, the owner of the latest site, has begun proceedings to serve the Travellers with an order to leave.

A spokesman for the company said: “We are pursuing legal action to have them removed.”

The Travellers have been forced to leave three previous sites after having eviction notices served on them.

West End councillor Fraser Macpherson said: “The site agent is taking legal action and I’m pleased they are taking a pro-active stance.

“The time that it takes to remove them from each site is a fundamental issue and I have spoken to the council’s legal officers about the process and the speed at which it takes place.”

The caravans left their last camp at Riverside Business Park on Friday morning, after receiving an order to leave from owners Brakes on Thursday.

Council workers spent Friday and Monday cleaning up the site, which was covered in rubbish.

Waste left included an abandoned caravan, empty gas cylinders and building supplies.

Mr Macpherson said: “We have a situation where there is a site that is full of rubbish, immediately adjacent to the airport runway, so it needs to be cleared from a safety point of view. It’s important we recognise the need to make sure that areas of land are as secure as possible to make sure these unauthorised sites don’t happen again.

“Travellers could move on to unauthorised sites all over the city.”

The mess left at previous camps in Claverhouse, on Charles Bowman Avenue and Jack Martin Way, cost more than £10,000 of taxpayers’ money to clean up.

While the clean-up at Riverside will be carried out by the council’s environment department, Dundee City Council has confirmed the property’s owners will be paying them for the work carried out.

Dundee City Council operates an official site for Travellers at Balmuir Wood near Tealing, but nearly all of the 20 pitches are currently empty.