Caravan site for families facing defeat - Lancashire

From the Gazette

Controversial plans for a caravan site in Preesall for use by Travellers look set to be turned down next month.

Residents, councillors and the Environment Agency have all hit out at an application for a caravan site for eight families at Blueberry Park, on Lancaster Road.

Coun Vivien Taylor, who represents the ward on Wyre Council, said: “It has been a blight on the residents’ of this area for over three years.

“The amount of turmoil and upset it has caused, it’s not fair for the law-abiding citizens who pay their council tax.”

Now, Wyre planners have dismissed the applicant’s claims the site is needed in the area.

A report to members of Wyre Council’s planning committee recommends the application should be rejected.

It claims: “The site is located in a flat open agricultural environment where its visual impact would be particularly harmful to the character and appearance of the area.”

Co-owner of the adjoining land, Marilyn Brown, is among those who wrote in opposition to the plans.

She said: “The development will create an obtrusive blight on the open countryside and have an adverse effect on the residential amenity.”

The application is part-retrospective and was submitted on behalf of the eight families living on the site.

The plans claim: “The applicants have invested all their savings in this land. There are no socially provided sites available to them in this part of Lancashire.”

Wyre Council’s planning committee will discuss the plans on October 2