Councillors have asked that plans to look at new ways to deal with unauthorised encampments be put on hold to allow more consultation with gypsy and traveller organisations.
BCP Council’s cabinet is due to consider starting the process of looking at new ways of dealing with the issues, including the potential for pre-emptive injunctions to be used at “hot spot” sites.
But concerns were raised by its scrutiny board on Monday about the amount of consultation with traveller and gypsy organisations ahead of this.
A cross-party working group of councillors has been considering ways of dealing with unauthorised encampments for the past year.
BCP Council spends about £100,000 dealing with an average of 50 encampments each year.
Among the measures put forward by the group to be considered included only “limited” use of physical barriers to sites regularly used, the potential creation of “stopping places” across the conurbation and introducing pre-emptive injunctions.
The recommendations were considered by the council’s scrutiny board on Monday before they are discussed at next week’s cabinet meeting.
But concerns were raised that gypsy and traveller organisations, including Kushti Bok, had not been consulted on the options put forward in the report.
“This is a hugely complex issue; it has to be measured and thought through,” councillor Drew Mellor, the leader of the Conservative opposition, said. Before we start narrowing down the options, as has been done in this paper, we need to make sure the gypsy and traveller community has been consulted. A lot of us in Poole have had significant experience with this and know the people we should be speaking to – stop trying to do things to people without asking them. We’re going down a narrow list of options without having asked the community about them.”
He suggested the cabinet not give approval for the working group to do further work at looking at the feasibility of introducing new measures until more consultation had been carried out.
And despite some members of the board saying this work could be combined, his recommendation was supported by most councillors and will be put forward for consideration at its meeting next week.
A final decision on what measures councillors will be asked to look at will be made at the September 30 meeting.
Article originally appeared on the Daily Echo
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