On Monday morning this week, the white caravans looked quite at home in the car park adjacent to platform 2 at Shipley railway station.

Red gas bottles, TV satellite dishes and an assortment of vehicles gave the impression of permanence, in spite of the 24-hour eviction notice, reportedly issued by Northern Rail on October 7.

This is the second week itinerants have occupied the site where parking is free. Before that, they, or another group of them, camped out on the car park of Steeton and Silsden station.

Getting rid of these uninvited guests is not a quick business. Jim Aveyard, Bradford Council’s environmental health manager, says that processing a civil offence case through County Court usually takes five days.

A glance through the files shows that the problem is endemic. In March, 2008, for example, 15 caravans occupied the pay-and-display St Thomas car park off Westgate.

Before that, itinerants had illegally camped on the Oastler Shopping Centre car park on Rawson Road, much to the displeasure of local traders.

The problem goes back at least to the mid-1980s, when Bradford Council adopted an ideological policy towards travellers, regarding them as an ethnic minority.

Illegal encampments and the environmental consequences were, along with the serving of Halal meat in schools and the Ray Honeyford Affair, one of the most polarising problems of that troubled decade.

Arguments engulfed the Labour Group, with radical councillors embracing the benevolent approach and their more mainstream colleagues calling for greater powers under the 1968 Caravans Act to get rid of unwanted guests and to oblige other West Yorkshire local authorities – Calderdale and Kirklees especially – to provide official sites for gipsies.

Leeds had one, Wakefield had one and Bradford two, at Esholt and Bowling Back Lane. These two locations currently have 47 fully-occupied pitches. The residents tend to resent the incursion of outsiders.

Mr Aveyard says that not all gipsies are travellers. “There are two categories: those who are Romany, and travellers, often of Irish descent,” he said.

English gipsies regard themselves as true Romanies. They do not like to be lumped together with Irish tinkers, mumpers or didycoys – often itinerant scrap merchants. In this sense there is not, and never has been, a single community of travellers.

That designation goes back to the tormented Eighties, to Bradford Roadside Stop, the project set up in 1984 to deal with welfare and literacy matters of itinerants, at a cost of £46,000 over two years.

In addition, between 1977 and 1987 Bradford Council spent a reported £84,000 evicting itinerants and mounding up the sites they had occupied. The T&A visited some of these sites – fields, brownfield sites, disused garage forecourts – and saw the state in which they were left.

That’s why the battle raged within the Council – the authority had a Travellers and Gypsies Selected Committee – about the pros and cons of providing more official sites.

John Ryan was a Bradford Labour councillor at the time. He is not surprised that Bradford is still dealing with the problem it had a quarter of a century ago.

Referring to the problem at Shipley, he said: “These gipsies are not interested in having a site; they are only interested in moving about the country and parking up wherever they want to. Using a site means making a financial contribution and involves some stability.”

Some believe itinerants are resented because of their carefree lifestyle, but it is less their freedom of movement and more their indifference to making a financial contribution that causes resentment.

Bradford Council tried to beef up its powers by applying for designation under Section 12 of the 1968 Caravans Act, which obliged itinerants either to settle on official sites or ask private landowners for permission to camp.

The former West Yorkshire Council refused to support Bradford’s application, so it failed.

Shipley Conservative MP Philip Davies confirmed that Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, said he intended to give councils greater powers to take action against illegal encampments.

Does he think that the provision of extra official sites in other parts of West Yorkshire would help Bradford?

“I don’t agree with local authorities being obliged to provide sites for gipsies. I know from my own experience at Esholt you end up creating a permanent menace.

“I am not in favour of local authorities finding places for gipsies to live. Let them find their own, like everybody else,” he said.