'We've got to fight for this place - all our babies are here'

COUNCIL THREATENS TO CLOSE DOWN TRAVELLERS' SITE OVER CLAIMS OF CRIMINALITY AND DISORDER

- HANNAH VAN DE PEER, STEPHEN TOPPING

FAMILIES have vowed to ‘fight for their babies’ homes’ after a Greater Manchester council declared it would shut down a caravan site.

Travellers have lived at Crompton Lodge, in the Moses Gate area of Bolton, for 20 years.

But authorities have linked the site to ‘escalating violence and criminality’. Greater Manchester Police alleges that guns have been hidden in toilet blocks at the site, large-scale episodes of disorder have broken out and knife-point robberies have taken place.

Bolton Council started the process of closing down Crompton Lodge yesterday, but the families living at the site won’t give up their battle to keep the caravan site running. Kathleen Moloney moved to Crompton Lodge in 2004.

She says she lives with her six children - aged 21, 17, 12, 11, eight and six - and her elderly uncle as one of seven families on the site.

It means around 40 people in total face losing their homes, and Kathleen fears she will be ‘left on the streets’.