Councillors have said 'alternative plans' are being enacted by council officials, after a court order to take back possession of one of South Bristol's largest open spaces was ignored by a group of travellers, who have been living there for a month or so.
The travellers arrived and set up camp on Hengrove Park, close to the former Whitchurch Airfield runway, in early June, and their presence caused the cancellation of the regular Whitchurch Car Boot Sale on the last weekend in June.
Bristol City Council lawyers began taking legal action to evict the travellers in late June, but this process faced delays. The city council was awarded a possession order by the county court on Thursday, June 29, but Bristol Live understands the paperwork for that order did not arrive at City Hall until last Tuesday, July 4.
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The possession order was served by council officers on the encampment six days ago, but according to local residents, in the meantime the numbers of people occupying the land there has actually increased.
Bristol City Council has plans to create a legal and permanent site for the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community on a fenced off part of the Hengrove Park site, off Western Drive on the northern side of the area. That would create a home for between six and eight caravans or mobile homes, but even that would do little to meet the big shortfall in suitable sites for the GRT community in Bristol. There are currently just three established sites for the traveller community in Bristol, and the city council has acknowledged there is a need to find sites to triple that number.
In a blog in February, after announcing the plans for Hengrove Park's permanent site, the Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, pledged to create more, and said some wrongly regard the discrimination against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people as the 'last acceptable form' of racism.
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At present, there is one permanent traveller site in Ashton Vale, which has 12 pitches, a transit traveller site in Lawrence Weston with 20 pitches, where residents are allowed to stay for up to three months at a time, and a site for ethnic Showpeople in Bedminster, which has 12 plots.
As well as this, there are a couple of 'meanwhile' sites, an initiative set up at the start of the covid pandemic, which provide an off-road site for van-dwellers who would otherwise be at the kerbside on a public road. One of those was set up in 2020 at Kingswear Road on the Northern Slopes between Bedminster and Knowle West - again in South Bristol - but last year the council gave itself planning permission to build a new 34-home housing development there.
A statement from the three councillors who represent Hengrove Park - Tim Kent, Sarah Classick and Andrew Brown - said last Wednesday that the council would be pursuing an 'alternate plan' if the legal action didn't work. "Council Officers have already started alternate plans if this order of the Court is ignored and they do not depart. Parks officers are aware of the waste within the park and have plans in place to clear this once the encampment has left," they said.
"Officers have already started planning how to increase security at the park to limit the ability of a repeat encampment and have identified some areas where action will need to be taken. Officers and councillors have been in very regular contact with the police as well as the many residents who have reported issues," they added.
