Sharp rise in number of Black Country traveller camps

The Walsall borough saw the greatest increase in sites, with 69 in 2015 in comparison to 15 sites in 2014.

A camp on Bescott Retail Park, close to Walsall FC's Banks's Stadium emerged in November 2013, as well an encampment in Warley Woods meadow near the Abbey Road entrance to the park.

Figures show that since 2015 the number of illegal encampments in Wolverhampton has almost doubled, from 10 in 2014 to 19 in 2015.

Travellers moved into Faulkland Street car park, just off the Wolverhampton Ring Road, in 2012 and in 2014.

In Dudley, the figure rose from 15 in 2014 to 29 in 2015 and in Sandwell the number of traveller sites increased by 10 from 30 encampments in 2014 to 40 sites in 2015.

Travellers set up at Sandwell Valley Country Park in October last year and in March this year 40 caravans arrived at the car park of Showcase Cinema, Dudley.

Residents of Meriden, about six miles from Solihull, also protested against the arrival of travellers in their village in 2010, prompting a legal battle that lasted three years.

The travellers finally left the site in April 2013 after 650 people joined the villager's organisation, Residents Against Inappropriate Development (RAID), to try and get them to leave.

Cannock Chase Council was the only local authority in the West Midlands to report a slight decrease, with the number of unauthorised traveller sites down from eight in 2014 to seven in 2015.

The figures were revealed as part of a report to Wolverhampton council's scrutiny board meeting, which looked at giving more powers to council officials and the police in dealing with travellers.

The report states that: "Wolverhampton has experienced regular unauthorised encampments over the past decade and longer. These can cause disruption and conflict locally and can be expensive and time – consuming to clear.

"Unauthorised encampments cause a problem which requires a range of solutions including the provision of permanent pitches for the gipsy and traveller community.

"Wolverhampton is not alone in the West Midlands in having high levels of unauthorised encampments in recent years."

The report also details a new policy around how to approach the arrival of travellers onto unauthorised sites and requires a welfare assessment be carried out by the council on every traveller as soon as they arrive.

But, the report does recognise the nuisance that travellers can cause communities across the region.

It states: "Our experience in Wolverhampton is that criminality is often associated with unauthorised encampments and examples would include damage caused gaining access to sites and the dumping of waste on land.

"Antisocial behaviour is reported by local communities with people often feeling intimidated and in some cases subject to abuse."

The news comes after a survey conducted by the council in autumn 2015 revealed that there were no suitable 'transit sites' for travellers to be moved to in the city following their eviction from an unauthorised site.

It also follows three petitions, signed by more than 2,600 people against plans for a travellers site in Darlaston. Plans for the site were scrapped in January this year after residents protested against the development.