Traveller crackdown: Tory MPs urge new law to move camps on QUICKLY
CONSERVATIVE MPs are pushing for a new law to make trespassing a criminal offence to stop travellers living on private land. MPs said the new law would enable police officers to swiftly handle unauthorised encampments on private or public land, speeding up the current powers that are often time consuming.
Travellers set up camp at Central Park in Plymouth
A total of 59 Tory MPs - nearly a third of the backbench Conservative party - have signed the letter.
It includes former Cabinet ministers John Whittingdale, Sir Michael Fallon, the former secretary of state for defence and Priti Patel, the former secretary of state for international development.
MPs said people “have a right to expect that the law should be applied equally and fairly to all and they want to see the authorities given additional powers to deal with unauthorised encampments, which are an increasing problem, particularly in the spring and summer months”.
The intervention follows a backlash against Surrey police after a number of camps emerged on several areas of private land in Cobham, Claygate and Long Ditton.
Travellers who set up camp in a park in Long Ditton were eventually moved on by the local council after three days, but the disruption to the area prompted the council to hire a specialist cleaning company to ‘cleanse’ the playground.
A shocking amount of damage was left behind with football pitches wrecked from drag racing cars, two dogs left at the site, and a water-logged cricket field.
In a statement published on Twitter on 7 August, Elmbridge police said it had issued a warning to travellers in Long Ditton without landowner permission, stating that they must leave the site by the evening.
The travellers were advised not to return to the borough due to previous patterns of anti-social behaviour.
The proposal to criminalise trespassing first appeared in the Conservative party’s 2010 general election manifesto.
Last month, Alok Sharma, the MP for Reading West, backed the move, launching a petition to make trespassing a criminal offence.
In his petition, Mr Sharma writes that the residents of Berkshire have suffered “intolerable” imposition from an increasing number of unauthorised encampments.