DEFENSIVE barriers will be installed near a Rugby primary school where travellers have trashed land and intimidated parents into keeping their children at home.
Travellers have set up camp on Central Park Drive three times since the September opening of the nearby Rugby Free Primary, leaving litter including human and food waste, and damaging play equipment in the school playground.
Work is due to begin this month on the barriers which will prevent further traveller visits, funded by the Education Funding Agency and businesses around the Central Park estate.
The school’s Chair of Governors Tom Legge thanked Mark Pawsey MP, the Education Funding Agency and local businesses for securing the funding.
He said: “One of the reasons for establishing Rugby Free Primary School was to increase the sense of community in an area that needed a school.
“While the number of incursions by travellers has been disappointing, it has had a galvanising effect and the whole school community is delighted that a solution has been agreed to solve this issue permanently.
“I would like to extend thanks to our teachers, parents and supporters for their understanding and support during this time.”
Mr Pawsey, who has been working to secure funding for the barriers over the last two years, said he was delighted.
He said: “The repeated incursions by members of the travelling community have caused great distress to many of my constituents, local businesses, parents of pupils at the Free School and indeed the young pupils themselves.
“I would also like to pay particular thanks to Tom Legge of Rugby Free Primary School who was instrumental in securing funding from the Education Funding Agency.”
Last month, the traveller camps prompted Warwickshire Police and Crime Commissioner Ron Ball to call for tougher police powers to tackle illegal camps, and said children at Rugby Free Primary were being kept at home by worried parents ‘intimidated’ by the travellers.
Police currently only have the power to move travellers off a site when there is a suitable alternative for them to move onto. It is up to the local authority to obtain court orders to move camps off public land – but the process is slow, with an average of three weeks before an order is approved.
Discussions are ongoing at Warwickshire County Council to increase the number of emergency stopping sites for travellers.
