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Dundee looks for fresh thinking on how to tackle illegal Traveller camps

The city council has spent thousands of pounds cleaning up after a minority of Travellers who refuse to use official sites or clear their camps before moving on.
The city council has spent thousands of pounds cleaning up after a minority of Travellers who refuse to use official sites or clear their camps before moving on.

Dundee City Council will attempt to tear up the rule book in a bid to stop Traveller encampments blighting Dundee.

A major consultation process, likely to last many months, is being launched by a local authority tired of being forced to use taxpayers’ money to enforce the law.

Councillors said the current system is broken and failing not only Dundee’s residents but the council and the travelling community.

They are adamant the process will not look to demonise the Scotland’s Travellers as the vast majority of those who visit the city do so without incident, using the purpose-built facilities at Balmuir Wood near Tealing.

Instead it will look at the minority of Travellers who choose not to use the site and instead set up illicit camps, attempting to establish why they do so.

In recent months, unauthorised encampments have been set up on private property, in public parks and on industrial estates across the city.

Clean-up by council officers after they move on has cost the taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds, while some individual groups have been linked to shoddy workmanship and low-level crime.

For in-depth coverage of the issue, and the options open to the council, see Saturday’s Dundee edition of The Courier.