I WRITE as a newly0-elected county councillor for Northfleet and Gravesend West, also the Gravesham Councillor for Painters Ash and chairman of planning for Gravesham.

As was covered extensively in the local media, after nearly five years Gravesham Council finally managed to evict the travellers from the site in the Green Belt/Special Landscape Area which they had occupied illegally since October 2004.

The recent county council election campaign demonstrated much political nonsense was promoted by my opponents to the effect the intention to move the travellers to a site near the police station in Springhead Road, Northfleet, was a malicious ploy to shift a “problem from the rural area to an urban Northfleet area”.

Coupled with a personal attack on me for the part I had played in the planning process, this was party politics at its most contemptible.

The simple fact is the present ridiculously lax planning laws in relation to gipsy and traveller sites meant Gravesham was obliged to find an alternative site to achieve an eviction, and councillors were advised by council officers the only land it owned of a size which could accommodate eight pitches and not in the Green Belt was the site in Springhead Road, for which planning permission was given, again on officer advice.

There is an important principle of “equality under the law” involved here, which meant an eviction had to take place.

I believe the majority of residents of the whole of Gravesham understand and support this.

The real answer is to achieve a change of government so a new Conservative administration can keep its pledge to bring in sensible planning laws in relation to unauthorised/illegal gipsy & traveller encampments.


Harold Craske