Peterborough councillor calls for more investment in “outer areas” of the city to prevent illegal encampments

A Peterborough councillor has called for more investment in the “outer areas” of the city to help tackle issues with illegal encampments.
Cllr Andrew Bond met with other councillors and council officers at Campbell Drive, Gunthorpe.Cllr Andrew Bond met with other councillors and council officers at Campbell Drive, Gunthorpe.
Cllr Andrew Bond met with other councillors and council officers at Campbell Drive, Gunthorpe.

Gunthorpe ward councillor Cllr Andrew Bond has made the call after organising a meeting between fellow councillors Cllrs Sandra Bond, Judy Fox, John Fox, Bryan Tyler, council officers and representatives from Aragon Direct services to discuss issues with illegal encampments in the city.

At the meeting, measures were discussed to prevent entry to the Campbell Drive site in Gunthorpe, where one of these encampments were set up in September.

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The fields are used by the community and are home to junior football club Gunthorpe Harriers, who had to postpone all of their training sessions and matches while the Travellers were on the site.

The site is accessed by one narrow pathway and measures are now being costed to prevent similar incidents in the future. These include a height restriction barrier, reinforcing existing bollards and the placing of a concrete block to create a chicane, making it impossible for caravans to access the site.

Cllr Bond was pleased that these measures were decided upon for the Campbell Drive site but called upon the council to be more proactive to prevent further problems with illegal encampments across the city.

He said: “We had many residents contact us with their thoughts and these were then passed on to council officers at the meeting, we are trying our best to improve things at the site.

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“Measures are being costed to prevent this from happening in future but I would like to thank the residents that were out everyday litter picking so that the clean-up was not as bad in other areas after the camp moved on; although there was still significant amounts of dog mess.

“This kind of thing is becoming an increasing problem in the area and all of the response to it from the council seems to be very reactionary; the council needs to be more proactive.

“One of the things that can be done is to invest more money in the outer areas of the city to assess where the areas vulnerable to encampments are and protecting them. A lot of money is being investing in areas but largely in the city centre. This is obviously very important but it would be nice to see some more being shared out to the outer areas so potential sites could be catalogued to stop this kind of thing happening.”

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