00:00For a fence solely designed to keep travellers from pitching on Milton Regis Recreation Ground,
00:07you might expect it to do its one job.
00:09But Swaleborough Council's latest attempt to stop settlements seems to have been ineffective.
00:16And this is the fence that surrounds the entirety of Milton Rec.
00:21I'm very sure, but as you can see, it's not very tall and it costs a whopping £18,000 for
00:27the council to build.
00:27And its sole purpose, really, was to keep you from driving across the wreck and setting on it as well.
00:34But has it really been that effective?
00:36On Sunday, at least 10 caravans have parked up on the section of grounds usually used for football matches.
00:44It's understood the council has CCTV footage of someone removing one of the bollards, allowing vehicles to enter the site.
00:51And although the travellers have since left, the question for councillors is what to do next.
00:58£18,000 is an awful lot of money for this fence. It doesn't seem to have worked.
01:06Possibly not, but my view is that they were coming in at this top end last year.
01:12They haven't come in at this end so far.
01:15The fencing is a deterrent, right? The fencing wasn't going to solve it.
01:18I made that clear last year. They can very easily knock it down.
01:21If they knock it down, which they have done, they cause criminal damage and it makes it easier for them
01:28to get removed.
01:28This is the fourth time travellers have made camp on the wreck within the last year.
01:33And although many residents angered by the incursion didn't want to speak on camera,
01:38those who did understood that this community also needs somewhere to live.
01:43We just want them to find a place where councillors can give them somewhere to go,
01:52but not on our wrecks or causing any trouble.
01:57There's a lot of money and when I see it going up, eventually, once I heard it was going up,
02:01I thought, well, even I can come round and dig them out and bring the car and the car around
02:06me now.
02:07I don't want them on the park because I obviously have two dogs as well and I like to walk
02:10the dogs in the park.
02:11So if they integrated better, maybe I wouldn't have so much of an issue, but they can cause a little
02:18bit of friction.
02:19But while residents remain on the fence about the travellers,
02:23Swaleborough Council faced mounting pressures to hit it out of the park on their latest attempt to secure the wreck.
02:31Megan Shaw for KMTV in Milton.
Comments