Travellers on Stychbrook Park
Travellers on Stychbrook Park

Travellers have returned to a park in Lichfield.

The group were spotted parked up on Stychbrook Park this morning (26th May).

A previous visit by travellers to the site last year saw damage caused, including hedgerows being knocked down by vehicles and footpaths being blocked.

It also follows a recent stay by a group on land at Saddlers Wood – with Cllr Doug Pullen, leader of Lichfield District Council, promising a review of access to public land across the city after they had been moved on.

He said:

“We will be conducting a review of access and security arrangements across all of our parks and public spaces and exploring other solutions to help us with situations such as this in the future.”

Cllr Doug Pullen, Lichfield District Council
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Nodge
2 years ago

Hilarious – shows how utterly ineffective both our council and police force currently are

Vote Tory: get a circus 😂

AnnS
2 years ago

Nodge, funnily enough a circus used to come to Lichfield every year and pitch on the land at the junction of the roundabout on Walsall Road and Limburg Avenue. But no longer.
Vote Tory: loose a circus, loose land, loose wildlife, get loads of houses 😂

Fence dweller
2 years ago

☝🏼 Cos labour would have likely gone over and offered tea and cakes, whilst checking if they could claim any benefits! 😂

Roy
2 years ago

Let’s be fair. It’s the justice system. Would have made no difference which council/ government was in Labour or Conservative. We are too soft. So stop making it political. Both are to blame.

Lichvegas
2 years ago

They were at Stychbrook Park this time last year. They’ll be there this time next year and in the years to come, until the council concretes the park over with a leisure centre and car park. Live your life and let other people live theirs.

Oh, and I don’t really care about some of the £176 per month council tax I pay being spent on clear-ups. Not when the council has wasted £12 million of our money on creating a heap of rubble and a plan for a shopping centre which will never exist.

Hereandthere
2 years ago

Well they don’t have this Problem in the Republic of Ireland where many of these people probably originate from. The Garda arrest them and seize their vehicles..

John
2 years ago

How about the fact that these people have nowhere else to stay over? Rather than demonising them you should feel sorry that there is not enough provision for them to stop on a temporary basis on a proper site with proper facilities. That’s what you should be demanding the councils (all 3 of them!) to be doing rather than spending public money on going to court every other week.

Ian Yates
2 years ago

I think the travellers would be camping wherever they like regardless of the political party in power. It’s an issue with no real solution. Maybe all councils should put aside designated areas of land for the travellers to come as go as they please. A compromise on both sides, that would require adequate communication.

John Allen
2 years ago

The words ‘stable door’ and ‘horse’ come to mind.

Stych in Time saves Nine
2 years ago

What was the thought behind not protecting this piece of public land from further incursion and misuse the last time the travellers invaded? No pun intended but LDC would do well to remember that a Stych in Time, Saves Nine.

LichVegas champion of travellers rights
2 years ago

@Lich Vegas – I have no issue with the Travellers but I despise the mess and vandalism they cause and the antisocial behaviour that is often witnessed in local shops and businesses. Plus it is known that crimes such as pet theft, house breaking and vehicle crime increase whenever travellers are in the area. Apart from that they are lovely.

Grumpy old Man
2 years ago

When I walked in the park last week there was NO way a vehicle could legally access the site apart from the car park because the gateway onto the park had a padlocked barrier across it !!! So obviously they have commited an offence to remove the barrier ? So come on Lichfield Police they’ve broken our laws so we expect you to uphold our laws by prosecuting these law breakers ? If not we ALL might as well forget the laws of the land and break into other people’s property ? Shamefull behaviour !!!!!

Cookie
2 years ago

LichVegas I agree.
John, why feel sorry for them? Its thier choice on how they live. The caravans they live in are immaculate, I just dont agree with the mess they leave.

Julian Delrimple-Sykes
2 years ago

John, perhaps you’ve got a piece of land they can stay on?

Cross Lady
2 years ago

To those who say don’t demonise them etc – if they didn’t terrorise people, leave human excrement and toilet paper on public footpaths, dump rubbish and steal (I have seen this with my own eyes) then they may be accepted and welcomed. Their behaviour is antisocial and unacceptable.

Les Battersby
2 years ago

Ann’s, loose???????

Tom Martyr
2 years ago

I remember a few years ago the council evicting travellers from their own land at dawn. Many of them are happy to have their own site. If the council were able to offer them something adequate for their needs this problem would be near to being solved.

Michelle
2 years ago

You think we are all the same there good and bad in all cultures and if there would just given us some land in each town with facilities there would not have this trouble because if you say that we are dirty just look at when you people have festivals the rubbish and that that usually when you go to beaches the rubbish that you leave when you go to parks the rubbish that you leave and has to be cleaned up but you have got to say the gypsies are dirty people that just don’t think when you’ve got the dustbin and in your dustbins what do you do the pied up outside your pavements so just think on this is the way we want to live and why should we have to act different because people in houses think that we are dirty and that crime goes up

Bill
2 years ago

They don’t have any we’re else to go the council don’t provide enough gypsy sites and Wen gypsys buy there own land and move on the land to live the council then reject the plans and move them of. So we’re do they go thin air. The council should let these people live on there own land or provide sites then they wouldn’t have this problem. And I know gypsys the ones I know all pay tax and there nice people live and let live

Rob
2 years ago

Crazy, a few travellers turn up on a piece of land and there are many complaints and they will be moved on as they are unwanted by the powers that be.

Build hundreds and hundreds of toy town houses on green belt, without the infrastructure in the town to cope, that are equally a blot on the landscape, very much like the half tin, half brick monstrousities built in the middle of this beuatiful city, well that’s ok

Selwyn Froggatt
2 years ago

Every time these caravan dwelling individuals turn up crime in the local area always shoots up. Now then I wonder if these two occurrences are linked? Hmmm……

Gipsy Dave.
2 years ago

More Authorised Traveller sites are needed to be sanctioned by councils across the UK.. In every County Lawfully!.

Adrian Wood
2 years ago

I am constantly amazed at the tolerance of us Brits.
I used to commute from Stafford to Derby every day on the A38.
I watched a gypsy site being constructed with magnificent facilities.
Guess what……….Within two weeks It was stripped of all pipes, toilets, basins and anything else not cemented down!
There is no place for any persons of this low calibre in this magnificent country of ours.
Get tough, get rid.
Contrary to some mis- informed left wing softies, taxes are not being paid but all amenities, schools, hospitals social care etc. are still expected.
Grow a spine and treat these people as if they are normal citizens if you wish, but that will mean prosecuting them as a normal too!
An all to rare occurance.

Michelle wants land
2 years ago

Michelle is a fine example of the quality of education that travellers receive. Although I do agree this community should be allowed provision of their own permanent land. Then they could start paying rates like the rest of us.

Jude
2 years ago

Shame on Lichfield District Council and Doug Pullen. More official sites please, and for goodness sake stop talking about Travellers as if they were less worthy than everyone else. Someone made the point that they generate rubbish: we all generate rubbish, why criticise Travellers in particular? I’ve witnessed aggression and crime committed by settled people (of which I am one). Does that mean I am to be assumed to be aggressive and criminal? That would be silly wouldn’t it?

Sean Magannaidh
2 years ago

It’s funny, when the travellers are in Ireland, they are classed as English, and when they are in England, they are classed as Irish, the fact by looking at their surnames, some are Irish, but in the UK, most travellers are actually English, the fact how travellers came about in Ireland, was when during the 1840s, when English landlords ran the native Irish off the Land to make room for more profitable cattle, the people that never went back to the land were what we now know as travellers,

Roy
2 years ago

Go on Jude get your wallet out and sponsor a site. But don’t ask me to contribute.

Dabney
2 years ago

Rob,
The people who buy the half tin half brick monstrosities are, I suspect, decent law abiding tax paying members of society who do not illegaly access somebody’s land, and leave all kindof mess including human waste when they are moved on which then has to be cleaned up at great cost to the rest of us.
What would your reaction be, I wonder, if they gained access to land next to you ?
BTW
Nodge
The Police Force became the Police Service many years ago and and not a very good one wherever you live.

Martin
2 years ago

Jude, people who live in houses and pay council tax dispose of their rubbish neatly via a service they pay for instead of dumping it and leaving others to clean it up.

Martin
2 years ago

Sean I think they get classed as Irish when all their vehicles have Irish plates on and or they have Irish accents.