Councillors are calling for a new gipsy policy in Kirklees after travellers set up camp on a Mirfield playing field.

The town's ward councillors claim the Council failed to cope with travellers who parked on Battyeford Playing Fields and are demanding it drafts new procedures to prevent and deal with illegal encampments.

Councillor Martin Bolt (Mirfield, Conservative) said: "There needs to be an overall review because I don't believe the Council has a policy to deal with travellers.

"The Council's response to the gipsies at Battyeford was a complete shambles and it went on for far longer than it should.

"I was told by Council officers it was too expensive to defend the authority's land.

"I don't agree. We need an audit of the Council's land and steps should be taken to make life difficult for gipsies wherever we can."

In July, 42 caravans were driven on to the Battyeford Playing Fields site in Huddersfield Road which is used by eight local football teams.

They left after the Authority secured a court order to reclaim the land. But as cleansing staff were clearing the site of rubbish and rubble left by the travellers, two more caravans arrived which took the Council nine days to remove. While the fields were occupied, police recovered two stolen vehicles and a car and caravan was dumped in the nearby River Calder.

Coun Bolt said: "The Council was preoccupied with clearing the fields up and didn't do anything to stop others arriving.

They need to put in ditches or mounds to stop caravans and act more quickly once court orders have been secured to remove travellers."

A motion put forward by Mirfield's ward councillors will be considered during a meeting of the full Council on Wednesday.

They say the review should consider the environmental impact and threat to public health of travellers' illegal camps, the current laws for dealing with the removal of travellers; and the security of Council land and monitoring of illegal gipsy camps.

Kirklees Council's head of leisure and recreation Richard Brooker said he had already arranged to meet with officers from the Council's legal department to discuss if procedures could be changed. He said: "Our current policy is to take legal action as soon as we hear gipsies have arrived on a site.

"We have 6,000 sites big and small and at each one we have done something to stop unauthorised access be it a gate, gulleys, trees or bollards.

"We need to get tractors onto many of the sites to mow grass which means putting up a gate and if a third party breaks the gate then there is little we can do."

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