All that needs to happen to stop the traveller incursions into our towns is for the police and local authorities to apply the laws that already exist.

Breaking and entering into property by forceful means, causing criminal damage to property, the dumping of rubbish, keeping a vehicle on the road without tax, insurance or MOT and in an unroadworthy condition, contaminating land and underground water sources, not sending your children to school, claiming benefits whilst earning money through other means, the intimidation of local residents by denying them access to local parks etc. are all serious crimes.

If I, or any other citizen, were to commit just one of the above crimes then we would be in court, fined and jailed in very short order.

Our vehicles would be seized, we would be banned from driving, we would be getting visits from Social Services regarding our children, and our movements would be restricted.

If the police and local authorities were prepared to apply the law to travellers in the same way they diligently and rigorously apply the law to the rest of us, then our towns would be free of this annual fiasco.

It would take just one or two cases where the police enforced these laws to send a very clear message to the travelling community that they can no longer get away with breaking the law.

Quite frankly, I and many other tax payers are sick and fed up with the authorities’ lack of guts in dealing with this issue and having to spend our money clearing up after travellers.

No group of people, either because of their ethnicity, religion or whatever other means by which they identify themselves, should be above the law in this or any other way.

It sends completely the wrong message to the vast majority of law-abiding citizens in this country who pay taxes for our laws to be enforced and applied to everyone who lives here – no exceptions!

If the travellers are not prepared to pay commercial overnight rates to camp legally on proper sites and respect those sites like the rest of us, then they need to make their own separate and long-term arrangements which keeps them within the law.

David Light, Canford Heath, Poole