Wolverhampton Council spends £600k on traveller clean-up in three years
Hundreds of thousands of pounds has been spent by Wolverhampton council clearing up traveller sites in the city over the last three years, it has been revealed.
The local authority has spent more than £603,000 from 2016 in clearing up encampments and forcing through costly court proceedings to evict travellers.
The spend has been revealed as a new injunction came into force which bosses hope will help solve the city's problem with encampments.
In October 2018, the injunction was granted by Birmingham High Court to protect 60 parks and green spaces across Wolverhampton.
Since then the council has been working to meet the requirements of the ban, which meant signs had to be installed at all protected spots and last week the ban finally came into force.
The injunction, which is in place for the next three years, will give officials new power to evict travellers without having to go through costly court proceedings.
Travellers found to be on the land illegally could be arrested, fined, have property seized or sent to prison.
The Conservatives in Wolverhampton Council have been critical of the Labour-run authority for not including more sites in the ban, and for the time it took to bring it into force.
Tory councillor Paul Singh said: “This is a shocking amount of residents’ money that the Labour Party has spent clearing up illegal traveller sites over recent years.
"It clearly shows that this High Court injunction should have been obtained years ago, because whatever the costs of obtaining it, it surely wouldn’t have amounted to the more than £600,000 that Labour have spent whilst dragging their feet.
“I’ve had a personal involvement in this issue because of the illegal encampments at the Windsor Park Playing Fields in Penn.
"Conservative councillors have worked hard to get the Council to obtain this injunction.
"The delay in getting this High Court injunction has seen £600,000 spent on Labour’s inability to get a grip on this important issue, instead of being saved and spent on vital services such as bin collections.”
A spokesperson at City of Wolverhampton Council said: “An injunction against unauthorised encampments is something we have been working towards since 2016.
“Harlow Council were the first local authority in the country to take out a borough-wide injunction against persons unknown.
“Our decision to work towards obtaining an injunction for Wolverhampton began following Harlow’s success and our hard work has continued which led to our recent achievement in gaining an injunction to protect 60 sites throughout the city.
“It takes time to build a case, to gather evidence against persons unknown to support our application.
“Now we have the injunction, we are able to remove anyone occupying any of the protect sites more quickly to prevent them from being trashed and can ensure the taxpayers money will be spent on services in need.”
