THE latest unauthorised travellers encampment at Branksome’s Beach Road car park, having moved straight from Baiter Park, will have come as little surprise to most Poole residents But it seems to have done so to officers and elected officials of Poole council, whose job it is to prevent such incursions.
In May this year, having failed to agree on a permanent site for the travellers, the council voted a sum of £231,000 to protect vulnerable sites that have suffered previous and recent incursions.
Yet why the inaction by Poole council in not anticipating, or acting on, reasonable intelligence from the police as to the next likely movements of the travellers, using the funds that they have themselves voted for to prevent just such illegal incursions.
No doubt we will now get the usual hand-wringing response from a Poole council spokesman stating how it is impossible for them to prevent these illegal encampments.
A more proactive and anticipatory approach, based on past history (there is after all plenty to go on) and a closer liaison with the police (a dozen traveller caravans moving through Poole can hardly have gone unnoticed) is long overdue.
DAVID ARTAL, Lilliput Road, Poole
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