Council under pressure to allocate Gypsy and Traveller sites in South Ribble - Lancashire

From the Leyland Guardian

Allocated sites for Gypsies and Travellers should be earmarked in South Ribble, it is argued.

The borough council has been reluctant to set aside sites for travelling communities in its future housing plans, but the Government’s planning inspector has raised concerns over the lack of evidence to support this ruling.

The opposition Labour leader has also spoken out about the leading Conservatives’ decision to omit Gypsy and Traveller sites from its Local Development Framework (LDF).

Coun Matthew Tomlinson said: “In accepting that it is politically difficult to make this type of decision, the fact is that travellers do exist and they have to be catered for, because if they’re not, they could just turn up on our parks and car parks.

“The current leadership of the council has been reluctant to cater for travellers for a long time, but we do need to be more robust about this decision-making.

“It can’t just be because ‘we don’t want those sort of people around here’.

“People might not want it, but it’s my view that it would be better to have somewhere for them to stay so that if they turn up on parks or car parks, we can say ‘no, we have some proper provision for you here.’”

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