AS borough councillor for Wallisdown and Winton West, I gave my full support to residents in the ward when travellers set up camp at Slades Farm in 2013.

Thanks to the efforts of the council, local residents and with the support of our MP Conor Burns, we eventually got the travellers to move on, leaving a terrible mess. We were told at the time by Dorset Police that they did not have the powers to take prompt enforcement action.

In the intervening years, the council has on many occasions met the police and crime commissioner and Dorset police officers and all have agreed that the annual summer incursion by groups of travellers is a real problem for the town.

There have been calls for Parliament to do more to ensure that they are moved on or prevented from invading our public spaces.

This time, I was one of the local residents directly affected by the illegal encampment at Muscliff Park. Why does it seem that we have made no progress at all in three years?

I understand that the government says that Section 61 of the Criminal Justice Act gives police enforcement powers to move on illegally camped travellers. Dorset Police deny this, on the grounds that there is no authorised site to which to move them.

What concerns me is that the police seem just to leave it at that. Yet if local people behaved in the same anti-social way as traveller groups like the one in Muscliff Park, the police would be down on us like a ton of bricks.

I support what both the town’s MPs have done and continue to do in Parliament to bring common sense to this issue. But I have to ask why the police don’t do more?

Is it any surprise that they return year after year? Dorset Police, please use your enforcement powers to protect the public.

SUSAN PHILLIPS

Borough councillor, Wallisdown & Winton West and Muscliff resident

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