We’ve Got No Legal Pitches Available, Say Spectrum Travellers

Published on: 29 Jan, 2019
Updated on: 1 Feb, 2019

The half dozen Traveller caravans occupy one section of the Spectrum car park.

The Travellers who settled their caravans and mobile homes in the Spectrum car park by Stoke Park yesterday say they have nowhere else to go.

A GBC spokesperson said: “We are doing all we can, as quickly as possible in our unauthorised encampment process. We have provided the occupants with bin bags, and made arrangements to remove rubbish.

“The park and ride is largely unaffected, although there will be a reduced number of parking spaces.”

One of the group, Mary, who described them as “Irish full-bred Travellers”, said they had chosen the car park because there were no legal pitches available.

“We were last in Poole, Dorset,” she said. “The men meet and decide where we go next, they make the decisions. We were here in Merrow last summer.

“Guildford are not too bad as a council, at least they come and take away the rubbish. Other councils don’t always do that and we get the blame.”

But she denied the rubbish bags were provided by GBC. “We provide those ourselves,” she said. Hospitably, she offered our reporter a share the stew she was serving half-a-dozen, well-behaved small children, not all her own.

The homely caravan had a television and Mary said some of them accessed the internet through their smartphones. The group also had a generator.

One man who was heading towards his parked car said that the only problem with the Travellers, as far as he was concerned, was that they were taken up car parking spaces.

Cllr Caroline Reeves, the GBC Lib Dem leader, said: “Conservatives at Surrey County Council have chosen not to provide transit pitches for Travellers, instead passing the responsibility and cost for dealing with such incursions onto borough councils.

“There is a financial implication to GBC taxpayers through the enforcement process and any subsequent clean-up. In addition, limited police resources are used at each incursion at a time when we face having to pay more council tax for the police after years of Conservative cuts to funding.”

Ice-hockey fans expressed worry over the reduced number of parking spaces for tonight’s league game at the Spectrum when the Guildford Flames take on the Sheffield Steelers.