Call to be kept better informed when Travellers are in town - Cheshire

From wilmslow.co.uk

Town councillors have requested to be kept better informed about the action being taken when Travellers set up unauthorised encampments in the town.

Following a meeting with Cheshire East Council (CEC), Cllr Gary Barton presented a report to the Town Council at their meeting on Monday, 16th September.

He told his fellow councillors that they looked at three main areas: prevention, clean up and moving them on - which he said there were very set rules about and sometimes there was a misperception about the powers the council and police have.

Speaking about prevention, Cllr Barton said "Awareness is primarily the reason why Wilmslow in particular has a reasonably high number of incidents because Travellers are able to get work from local residents."

He suggested that the main areas the Town Council could assist with was discouraging residents from giving work to the Travellers and strengthening sites to limit access. Recent work at Carnival Field includes the installation of lockable bollards which can only be removed with significant machinery.

Cllr Barton has asked CEC to carry out a review of vulnerable sites in Wilmslow, including Carnival Field, the school playing fields and other sites they identify, and report back whether there is a need for any gates, fences etc to be installed - which the Community & Order Committee will then consider funding.

Cllr Hilary Shepherd commented that one of the problems is that when Travellers have set up camp in the town local residents don't know what is being done to resolve the problem and therefore assume nothing is being done.

She asked "Would it be possible for Cheshire East to publicise exactly what they are doing? So people know something is being done, as I got a lot of emails asking exactly what is being done. People thought nothing was being done."

Councillors agreed that they would like to receive regular updates and be kept routinely informed about future incidents.