Traveller site saga to be settled at inquiry

The controversial plan to convert land at New Acre Stables in Wolverhampton Road into a gypsy site with four static caravans and an amenity building will be discussed next month.

A dispute over the proposal has raged for a number of years, even reaching former Secretary of State Eric Pickles.

And now an inquiry at the council offices on Wolverhampton Road, Codsall, is set to take place on March 22 at 10am.

Should permission be granted to applicant William Lee, work would also need to be done to provide access to the new pitches.

It is the third application by Mr Lee to build a travellers pitch on the site.

The original application had been for 19 caravans on seven pitches, as well as the two amenity blocks.

When the second application was submitted June 2014, Philip Brown, the agent acting on behalf of Mr Lee, told an earlier planning inquiry that the changes would mean a reduced impact on the green belt, adding that only a quarter of the land originally earmarked for the development would be needed.

He said: "Firstly, clearly this application is for a smaller site and therefore it is clearly a less significant development and has a less significant effect on openness than a development of the whole site.

"Secondly, when one compares what was proposed under the original application and what is proposed on the plot now, on the same area of land the original application showed seven caravans and two amenity buildings.

"Now it is six caravans and two amenity blocks."

But Paul Turner, planning consultant for South Staffordshire Council, argued that the concern is that, taken on its own, the site would be smaller, but the density would be greater.

British traveller Mr Lee said he had applied for his family to live at other sites but all of them were full.

Mr Lee, who currently lives at the site, won permission to build a 19-caravan camp on the land in 2011.

But members of Penkridge Parish Council wrote to the district council voicing their concerns.

The bid was initially rejected, following a High Court injunction stopping more caravans from joining 10 that had moved onto the site illegally a year earlier.

The family appealed against the decision, triggering a three-day public inquiry.

Former Communities Secretary Eric Pickles then intervened because of the proposals' size and location on the green belt land.

But the travellers were eventually granted permission to temporarily house caravans there.