Gypies need a place to live (From Stroud News and Journal)

Gypies need a place to live

GYPSIES at the centre of a planning row in Brookthorpe have defended their right to set up a campsite on protected land near the village.

Their move to the area occurred almost overnight last year, outraging local residents who said the swoop flouted planning laws and feared the green spot would become an eyesore.

But in an exclusive interview with the SNJ the travellers said they had every right to live in the area and added: "We are not here to cause trouble."

Spokesman Herbert Varey, 46, said: "If we want to move away that is our nomadic way of life but we need a base for our children's education, doctors and normal things other people have got every day.

"People just get this idea of what travellers are supposed to be like but we do not mean them any harm. We just want a place to live.

"The parish council is completely against us but they have never visited the site, never come to talk to us."

Fellow traveller John Hibbs, 46, added: "They are just paranoid. There is a notion of travellers as bad but there is good and bad in everything. There are thousands of people in prison in this country and they are not all travellers."

Building control councillors from Ebley Mill visited the site yesterday after a storm of objections from local residents and parish councils.

Officers have recommended councillors allow the plans on human rights grounds, much to the dismay of parish councillors and local residents.

Bruce Wiggall, chair of Brookthorpe-with-Whaddon parish council, said: "We are pretty unanimous in feeling they just bull-dozed their way in without any planning permission.

"This parish council has worked hard and strong to make it a special landscape area. The fact that they can just move in makes a mockery of the whole planning system.

"Travellers have a perfect right to have homes as much as everyone else but they must go through planning law. I cannot just build houses anywhere I want so why should any other group?"

Councillors are set to vote on the site application at the next meeting of the Development Control Committee at Ebley Mill on Tuesday, February 8.