Walsall Council Officers have been successful in moving travellers of council owned land on its border with Sandwell MBC in Chapel Lane, Great Barr.

The travellers moved off the site following the granting of a court order yesterday (Thursday). It now looks as if the same group have moved onto another site in the borough off Goscote Lane in Blakenall Lane.

Cabinet member for Communities Cllr Ian Shires had called for a review of current policy in dealing with this problem soon after taking up responsibility for Community Safety just a couple of months ago. “This sort of thing must be very distressing for residents living in the areas affected and utterly soul destroying for officers who see all their hard work dashed as travellers move to another location.”

Last October following a summer of unprecedented numbers of unauthorised encampments Walsall Council became only the third council in England to obtain a county court injunction on 12 of the worst affected sites. This action dramatically reduced the time taken to get the travellers evicted.

The process worked at first, but this year travellers have shifted their attention to sites not listed on the injunction. This has lead, quite understandably, to calls for more sites to be added to the list. This is not as easy as it first appears, for a start the court have said that they will not concede to a blanket ban of all green spaces in the borough.

Secondly the fact that there is an injunction in place means literally that if travellers go on one of these sites the council’s enforcement team and legal section have to drop everything and concentrate solely on getting the travellers evicted at the expense of everything else. That is just not practical and would soon clog the systems up.

Finally the Police simply do not have the numbers to provide the back up needed when bailiffs and council officers turn up to move the travellers on.

Commenting on the dilemma Cllr Shires said “The one tool left in our armory would be to identify a suitable site somewhere in the borough for a transit site. This would mean that any travellers coming into the borough would have to use the transit site or be forced to move on.

“I have discussed this with colleagues on the Cabinet and have asked officers to draw up a list of suitable council owned sites which would form the basis of consultation should we decide to take this forward.”