Villagers ‘victims of anti-social Traveller behaviour’

VILLAGERS living near a controversial Travellers’ site in Britain yesterday told a planning inquiry they had been victims of “crass anti-social behaviour” and “appalling incidents of intimidation.”

But the Travellers, the majority of whom are from Ireland, who want to expand the camp on the edge of Cottenham near Cambridge said they were an ethnic minority suffering racial discrimination.

The two sides laid out their concerns as a planning inspector began to hear more than a dozen appeals from Travellers, who have been refused permission to establish plots at the Smithy Fen camp by local authority South Cambridgeshire District Council.