Plans for transit site to help stop 'game of cat and mouse' in future

LIKE “one big game of cat and mouse” “chasing them around the town” is how the councillor with responsibility for travellers as part of his portfolio described groups moving from area to area this past week - as he revealed plans for a transit site for them.

- DAN NEWBOULD

We reported last week how a group had moved from Foxglove, Amington to Ninefoot Lane, Wilnecote and as we went to press remained in areas of Stonydelph. Places like Dosthill and Bolehall have also been frequented this year.

Martin Summers, portfolio holder for environmental health and community partnerships at Tamworth Borough Council, told the Herald: “The notice for them (Stonydelph encampment) to move expired so we have to go to court and file legal paperwork. It is frustrating. There is a cost and it isn’t right.

“Where police have used their powers to move them on quite quickly, around sports fields and places where people are going to be using the facility, they have ended up just chasing them around the town. People think you can control where they go and you can’t. It is like one big game of cat and mouse.

“We have had illegal encampment problems for decades. Tamworth is attractive because it is right in the middle of the motorway network.

“I think I have managed to do a lot more in the last two years since it has been my responsibility than has ever been done before and I think it is starting to show.

“We are starting to gradually push them away from areas of land they would normally go and they are going on places they have never been on before which we are working on getting defences for.”