Council digs ditches to keep unauthorised camps off parks

Birmingham City Council has started digging ditches around parks to stop caravans and vans being driven onto them, after a summer of unauthorised encampments across the city.

Trenches have been dug around at least three green spaces in the south of the city in recent months, a tactic compared by some to the moats around the area's old castles.

Where the ditches are

Daisy Farm Park, off Maypole Lane in Highter's Heath, has had trenches dug around its edge in recent weeks. The same has been done at Manningford Road in Druids Heath, where the local police team said a trench was being dug "to prevent any unlawful encampment". Trenches were also put in at the entrance to Chinn Brook Recreation Ground in Yardley Wood in August.

"Whack-a-mole"

Birmingham has had scores of incidents this summer in which travellers arrived in caravans, motorhomes and other vehicles and set up camp on public land. Officials would use legal powers to move an encampment on, only for it to reappear somewhere else shortly afterwards.

Each move takes time and money, and parks are often left needing to be cleaned up and repaired, with damaged gates and barriers a particular problem.

What the council says

A council spokesperson said the authority uses "a range of proportionate site-management measures to deter unauthorised vehicle access and unauthorised encampments on parks and open spaces where there is an evidenced history of recurring incidents".

"Increased encampment pressures, together with repeated damage to existing boundary infrastructure and access controls, have required the council to consider a wider range of preventative measures," the spokesperson said.

"The use of ditches, bunds and other landscape interventions forms part of a broader toolkit of options and is implemented only where considered necessary, appropriate and site-specific."

The council said it was "committed to safeguarding public open spaces for the benefit of all users" and would keep the measures at each site under review.

A wider question

Ditches and earth banks, known as bunds, are a common way for councils to protect open land because they stop vehicles without fencing off a park from people on foot. They are cheaper to install and harder to damage than gates and posts.

Councils also have a duty to assess the accommodation needs of Gypsy and Traveller communities and to plan for sites where they can stop lawfully. Campaigners have long argued that a shortage of such sites is one reason unauthorised encampments keep happening, while residents near affected parks have complained about rubbish, damage and losing the use of their green spaces.

Anyone who sees an unauthorised encampment on council land can report it to the council online. Police should be called on 999 if a crime is in progress, or on 101 otherwise.