Fresh traveller camp set up in Kingshurst

UPDATE (05/06/18): Solihull Council has confirmed that a court order has been secured, requiring the travellers to leave by 11am tomorrow (Wednesday).

TRAVELLERS are reported to have moved back onto Babbs Mill, the latest in a series of incursions at the site.
Police and Solihull Council have been notified after a group of caravans returned to the Kingshurst beauty spot this afternoon.
The incident comes just a couple of weeks after a senior borough councillor called for greater powers for councils to deal with unauthorised encampments, having argued that present legislation left local authorities "chasing" travellers around sites just a few miles apart.
Addressing a public meeting last month, Coun Tony Dicicco said that the current process for getting an order to evict a group took several days and did nothing to prevent them relocating to another site nearby.
"The big frustration for me was that we would bust a gut to get this injunction to get them off the piece of land, they'd drive half a mile down the road and break on to another piece of land.
"So to me the law is failing. The injunction, when we get it, should not just be for that piece of land and those travellers, it should be the whole of the borough ... that prevents them coming back to our borough and causing the disruption that they do."
Coun Dicicco, who had been the cabinet member for stronger communities and partnerships for the previously two years, had urged the public to make their feelings known during the current consultation on possible changes in the law.
During the course of the Question Time-style meeting - which gave residents the chance to raise concerns about crime and public safety - a number of those in attendance voiced fears about traveller camps.
There was a general consensus among those who spoke that too little was done to prosecute those who broke on to sites.
Solihull Police Commander, Chief Supt Bas Javid, acknowledged that the previous two years had seen higher than usual numbers of camps being established in Solihull.
He said that to date there had been fewer incidents this year, although those that there have been have been concentrated in the north of the borough.