Unauthorised Encampments

Mary Robinson Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Morton]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her contribution. I think transit sites and allocations are part of what is actually a much bigger issue. I will come on to some of those points later.

Mess is so often left at these sites. The state that some of the sites are left in following an eviction is quite simply a disgrace. There are masses of litter and household waste, while industrial waste is commonplace—be that bricks or leftovers from building work. I have seen huge piles of garden waste, which often appears to be from work carried out by members of these sites then brought back to the encampment and dumped.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

I agree with my hon. Friend: this is about the impact on local communities when waste is left on a site. These are recreational spaces—in my case, on Park Road football field in Cheadle—and are left in a terrible state afterwards. There is also quite a substantial clean-up cost to the community, which leads to that feeling of real resentment against the unauthorised encampments and the Travellers.

[Wendy Morton]

My hon. Friend makes a helpful intervention. It is often the waste left behind that creates the tension within our communities. On one occasion, I was due to meet a constituent at a site in my constituency from where an encampment had recently been moved on, to see the state it had been left in. Shortly before I left my office, the constituent called and advised me to bring a pair of wellies. When I arrived at the site, I sadly realised why I needed them: because of the state the site was left in. It is not uncommon for human excrement to be left on those sites. For members of the council’s “Clean & Green” team to have to go and clean up these sites is really not fair, not acceptable and certainly not what the council tax payers of Walsall borough pay their council taxes for.

Recently, after Travellers moved on from an encampment at Aldridge airport, there were, in addition to the waste we have sadly come to expect, four empty boxes that had contained TVs and even a car. Sadly, that was again left for the council to clean up. Surely the cost burden of cleaning up that mess should not fall to my local residents. Some councils are now successfully prosecuting fly-tippers, so is it not time to start prosecuting and fining Travellers for the mess that they leave in their wake? As well as the costs that come with repairing the destruction of public land and the clean-up of waste, there are wider societal costs.