Court order won over travellers site 'extension'

Work to build a suspected travellers' site over the bank holiday weekend was done with "total disregard for the planning process", a local authority said.

South Cambridgeshire District Council has been granted a court order prohibiting further work on a field west of Moor Drove in Cottenham after local people reported seeing HGVs transporting building materials there.

The authority said it believed the site would form "an effective extension or leapfrog expansion" of the existing lawful site on an adjacent field.

In its application to the High Court, the council said it believed the work was carried out "in the hope that no action will be able to be taken until after the weekend".

The work was reported to have been carried out on the Saturday and Sunday of the Spring Bank Holiday weekend.

The injunction is meant to prevent further development of the site, with imprisonment, fines or seizing of assets possible for those found in contempt of court. It was granted against "persons unknown".

Stephen Kelly, joint director of planning for the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service, said the "scale and commercial plant and transport provided suggests that the works were pre-planned for a time when it was anticipated that the council offices would be closed".

He said there was a "pattern by which development has historically occurred first, with retrospective applications and appeals following afterwards" on agricultural land in the area.

Kelly said the council had "considered matters which affected persons might raise, including unmet need for Gypsy and traveller pitches, family and health circumstances, the best interests of children, the right to respect for private and family life, property rights and the planning merits".

But these could not be considered in the absence of a formal application, he said, and the work undertaken displayed a "total disregard for the planning process and the intent to carry on regardless".

He said development could contribute to "the creeping urbanisation of the open countryside" and that parts of the site were at high risk of surface water flooding.

Cambridgeshire County Council provides 10 traveller sites in the county, including two in the South Cambridgeshire district, with "limited places" and waiting lists that the authority said acknowledged were "often long".

Henry Batchelor, the district council's lead cabinet member for planning, said the authority "expects to return to the High Court for a further hearing on this matter shortly".

He said officers visited the site and would "continue to monitor the situation closely".

Do you have a story suggestion for Cambridgeshire? Contact us below.

Follow Cambridgeshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.