Newnham FOCUS Team

Click below to hear a short message from Cllr Paul Whitehead about the development at Aspects.

Paul Whitehead calls for action on traveller trespass

Newnham Lib Dem Borough Councillor Paul Whitehead has called for meetings to disucss the issue of recent traveller trespass incidents on council land between the Newnham Avenue allotments and the Athletics Stadium, and later on Goldington Green. The travellers first set up camp beside the allotments in late April, evidently removing the lock from the gates that was put there two years ago to stop them.

The Borough Council has now agreed to hold a meeting at the Athletics Stadium to discuss site security in the near future.

We would like to hear any views or suggestions from local residents ahead of the meeting. Please email paul@bedford.libdems.org with any comments, supplying your name and address.

Need for Borough-wide action

No sooner had the travellers moved on from the allotents, they set up camp in Kempston, then on Goldington Green, and have since moved to Mowsbury Park in Putnoe.

"Each time they are moved on it costs the Borough Council thousands of pounds in legal fees alone, not to mention the cost of clean up, and repairing any criminal damage. I'm worried that we will spend months chasing them from one green space to another at the taxpayer's expense," said Paul Whitehead.

"That's why I've asked the council to set up a crisis summit, involving senior council officers, legal staff, the police and representatives from all the political groups on the council to look at the issue. We need to be asking what exactly we are allowed to do under the law; what other local authorities do when faced with these problems, and we need to ask the police for their views, and find out if there is more we can do to deter the travellers from illagally occupying land in future," Cllr. Whitehead added.