Plans to refurbish Gypsy sites - Wiltshire

From the Salisbury Journal

TWO Salisbury Gypsy and Traveller sites will be refurbished if plans to improve the sites get the go ahead.

Wiltshire Council has submitted plans to bring the Dairy House Bridge site in Southampton Road and Oak Tree Field and Odstock transit site in line with good practice guidance on Traveller sites.

The council wants to demolish existing brick amenity buildings at the Southampton Road site and refurbish it, making 18 pitches into 14 larger pitches with landscaping, resurfacing and construction of new single-storey amenity buildings and a management building.

The Odstock sites will be refurbished from a 32-pitch site and a 12-pitch transit site into a site with 44 permanent pitches.

At Dairy House Bridge the drop in the number of pitches is to bring the site in line with government guidance, which suggests smaller sites are more successful as they are easier to manage and tend to be more acceptable to people as they have less impact on their surroundings.

The pitches will be reconfigured to make them as close to 325 sqm as possible and each will have a new amenity building, which must last 60 years and have a bathroom, kitchen and a living space or day room big enough for dining.

The council received £3.4m from the Government in 2012 to improve the Gypsy and Traveller provision in the county. The money is ring-fenced to refurbish 40 pitches and create 20 new pitches on or near the existing sites. The council has six permanent sites and one transit site.

The application was registered last week and people have until March 6 to comment on the applications. A decision is expected to be made by the end of April.