Sedgemoor District Council has spent more than £5,400 in the past two years removing people camping illegally on its land, it has emerged this week.
The authority has published the figures and new details of its procedure for removing travellers from ‘unauthorised encampments’. A report was considered at its corporate scrutiny committee on Tuesday (June 12th).
The council has pledged to provide more authorised travellers sites in the district to reduce the number of illegal encampments and the cost to taxpayers of dealing with them.
Between April 23rd, 2016 and May 30th, 2018, the council had to deal with 16 illegal encampments – five in the last eight months of 2016, eight in 2017 and three in 2018 to date.
Burnham-On-Sea saw three quarters of the unauthorised visits, with Bridgwater experiencing three and the remaining one occurring in Highbridge.
The Pier Street car park in Burnham-On-Sea has been partially occupied by travellers seven times in the past two years. The number of individuals and vehicles involved ranged from 20 on St Matthew’s Field in Bridgwater to a single person in a tent in Burnham’s Esplanade car park.
The council believes that the main cause of people camping illegally is “the lack of authorised sites and stopping places”, rather than people not desiring to use existing facilities.
Pictured: A group of travellers at Apex Park earlier this year
