Dorset travellers’ site may ‘sweep aside’ laws (Daily Echo 14/1/09)

Dorset travellers’ site may ‘sweep aside’ laws

7:20pm Wednesday 14th January 2009

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By Juliette Astrup

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LAWS protecting precious countryside could be swept aside to push through a controversial travellers’ camp.

Merley Hall Farm at Ashington, between Poole and Wimborne, is
enveloped by green belt and banked by conservation areas and sites of
special scientific interest.

But in a move described by the ward councillor as “mind-boggling,”
it has been singled out by Borough of Poole as a possible location for
eight-pitch transit site.

Now a senior council planning officer has said that for the
encampment to go ahead, the site would have its green belt protection
removed.

In a letter to a resident, planner Helen Harris admits that a
travellers’ site in the green belt was likely to seen as “inappropriate
development”.

She adds that, if the council were push ahead, it would be
necessary to “remove the green belt designation from the land
required”.

The letter horrified Keith Bainton, of Friends of Rural Ashington.

He said: “The council seem to change planning laws for their own
convenience. If you were asking them to come up with the most
inappropriate site, they would have chosen this one.”

Government guidelines for gypsy and travellers’ sites state
alterations can be made to the green belt boundary in “exceptional
circumstances”, for example in an area where there is a lot of green
belt land and no suitable sites exist outside it.

Mr Bainton added: “They can’t prove exceptional circumstances. It
sounds to me like they are trying to defend the indefensible.”

Daphne Long, ward councillor for Merley and Bearwood, said: “The
green belt can only be considered as a last resort. This is the only
option they’ve come up with – the mind boggles!”

Merley Hall farm was named as a possible site for a travellers’
camp as part of the Site Specific Allocations document, which will form
part of the blueprint for housing in Dorset over the next two decades.

Nigel Jacobs, planning policy and implementation manager at the
Borough of Poole, said it was identified in an “initial assessment” but
more work was needed.

He added: “If it is found a transit site could only be accommodated
in the green belt the council would need to go through the appropriate
planning process, including formal public consultation and independent
examination before any decisions were made.”

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