Traveller camps in Solihull cost £140k over 12 months

MERIDEN MP Caroline Spelman has spoken of the considerable cost of dealing with unauthorised traveller camps in Solihull.
Dame Caroline was among those invited to attend a special summit to discuss ways of dealing with a problem which continues to cause significant concern across the borough and wider West Midlands.
In North Solihull there has once again been a series of incidents this year at sites including Babbs Mill, Heath Park and land adjacent to Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens.
Dame Caroline told the meeting that tackling the encampments left the council with a six figure bill and said there was a sense of “injustice” among local people.
“Solihull continues to have a lot of incursions,” she said. “In the calendar year 2017, we had 25 incursions of groups between four and 40 caravans on public and private sites.
“And [the] conservative cost estimate of clearing up and managing that situation was that it cost taxpayers £140,000.
“But that does not include the time that it took various agencies actually to deal with the situation and doesn’t include the police time that was involved in trying to move the travellers on.”
She had suggested the region’s councils needed to look at ways to work more closely together, given that one local authority’s policy could have a direct impact on its neighbours.
 Last year saw a particularly high number of incidents across the borough, due in part to the bin strike in neighbouring Birmingham – which increased demand for casual labour.
Security was subsequently ramped up at various sites, which Solihull Council hoped would make them more difficult to access.
Although the measures have not been successful in every instance and, on their own, two of the recent encampments at Babbs Mill are estimated to have cost a combined total of £6,500.
Coun Alison Rolf, the council’s cabinet member for stronger communities and partnerships, said: “We need people who use our parks and open spaces to be our eyes and ears as the more evidence we can gather, the stronger our case will be to deter and ultimately prevent them.
“Be reassured our priority is to our residents and minimising the impact these incursions have on them and local communities.”
West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner, David Jamieson, who organised the recent summit, said he was pleased by the outcome of the discussions.
“Effectively dealing with unauthorised traveller encampments is a really important issue that requires us all to work together even more closely.”