Travellers set up camp on park - and charge local kids £10 to use it
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Travellers have set up camp on a park - then charged local kids £10 to use the field, a resident says.
Three incidents in recent days across West Yorkshire have seen travellers occupying playing fields.
In one shocking case, travellers left human excrement and household rubbish behind after a week encamped at the home of Shaw Cross Sharks ARLFC at Dewsbury.
A resident nearby to Netherton fields, Cheryl Armstrong, said: “I heard one of their kids was charging a tenner to let the local kids play in ‘their’ park!
"I’ve just nearly run into one who came flying out into the road on his scooter.
(Image: The Huddersfield Daily Examiner WS)
“Not good.
"If they surprise me and leave it clean in a couple of days I may change my view but I don’t want my kid playing on a dirty field.”
A third incident occurred at the car park at Leeds Road Retail Park in Huddersfield.
Rugby club members arrived at the ground at Dewsbury on Saturday to discover human excrement in the dugouts and behind the clubhouse and household waste strewn across the rugby field, The Examiner reports.
(Image: MEN MEDIA)
Last Thursday, three caravans and other vehicles drove on to playing fields used by Netherton Junior Football Club at Hawkroyd Bank Road, Netherton, after a post designed to prevent vehicle access to the site was left unlocked.
The travellers were briefly "locked in" by an angry resident who padlocked the post before one of the travellers complained.
A number of caravans were still at the site today.
(Image: MEN MEDIA)
At the weekend, a number of caravans pitched up in the car park outside Home Bargains on Leeds Road Retail Park.
Scores of people commented on the stories on the Examiner’s Facebook page – with the vast majority critical of the travellers’ actions.
Lynda Trickett posted: “Disgusting behaviour and then they wonder why people object to them camping in their communities.
"If they behaved in a decent manner and didn’t ruin things for those who pay for the services they might be tolerated better.”
(Image: MEN MEDIA)
Julius Baracskay said: “Take the registration numbers of all the vehicles. When they leave, if the site is not clean, find out where the vehicles are and impound them until the costs have been met for the clean-up.
Rita Phillips posted: “Disgusting!!!!
"Then they wonder why we don’t want them setting up in our area.”
But Kayla Lambert Jordan Williams argued: “People always have bad to say about travelers (sic) but does anyone actually know a traveler there (sic) decent people...
(Image: MEN MEDIA)
"You respect them and they will respect you!!!
At Netherton, residents were fuming.
Laura Blezy-d posted: “I was sat opposite the park in my car earlier watching a silver foreign plated car driving super fast all around the park doing handbrake turns with three men in the car!
“They have their own young children playing around the field whilst doing this and no doubt wrecking our local children’s football pitches in the process.”