Valley Road Public Meeting - what a turn out!



Hundreds attend MBI Traveller Meeting

 Hundreds of people attended our meeting on Monday to launch the campaign opposing the planning application for a Traveller site at Valley Road in Morley. The number of concerned citizens overwhelmed the Town Hall with people having to stand outside to hear the debate.

I set out our clear objections - both planning and community - to this application. The site is inappropriate for this use. It is too large an application, on contaminated land, to close to the railway line and is at an unsustainable location. It is industrial land and should be used to bring more jobs to Morley - not for a Cottingley Springs Mark 2 Travellers site.

Speaker after speaker backed our campaign including both Labour and the Conservatives. Concerns were raised about community safety and the impact the proposed traveller site would have on crime levels. One of the major points to come out of the evening was a clearly held view that Morley had already contributed to resolving the Leeds Traveller problem. With Cottingley Springs on our doorstep and several small family sites across the Greater Morley Area - we are doing our bit to accommodate the Traveller burden. Other areas need to take their fair share and not dump the problem on Morley Folk for them to solve!

My colleague Cllr Shirley Varley spoke passionately against the proposal which drew the largest applause of the whole evening!

We are WAGs not NIMPYs. That is We've already given not Not in my back yard types.Its time for other areas to take their fair share!

This was an excellent meeting and it is very humbling to see so many Morley Folk back the MBI Campaign. This is a unified campaign with Morley residents backing our position. It will be interesting to see if Labour buckle on the matter. After all our very own Labour Councillor Neil Dawson backed the expansion of Cottingley Springs as well as the £1.6 million financing package that goes along with it. It will be interesting to see if he can deliver his Labour colleagues to back the refusal campaign. After all Labours reputation in Morley is poor because of their voting record of backing Developers rather than local people.

Lets hope this time they have the backbone to back Morley and not the Party Line!

Building for the Public Meeting

Regular readers will know that we are building support for our public meeting on the proposed Travellers Site on Valley Road. The meeting, on Monday 12th May at 7pm in Morley Town Hall bringing residents together to campaign with us to stop this site being dumped on Morley.

Over 250 objections have already been received by the planning Department and it is our aim to push that over the 1,000 mark. Along with good planning reasons for refusing the application - such as loss of important industrial land and proximity to the railway - other reasons are equally as relevant as our communities already having contributed to resolving the Travellers problem with the citing of Cottingley Springs on our doorstep.

We believe we have contributed significantly to resolving the Traveller problem and now its time for other areas to take some of this burden. It would be clearly unacceptable to have over 100 Traveller Families in a limited geographical area and would lead inevitably to a Dale Farm problem - a problem which cost millions to solve.

Planning Rules say Travellers sites should be smaller family run sites of less than 15 pitches. This application clearly fails this test.

Its time for Morley Folk to stand up and be counted and to join our campaign to block this proposal. I hope as many residents as possible will join me on Monday to send a clear "No!" to this inappropriate planning application.

Campaign to stop 55 Pitch Travellers site at Valley Road



Cottingley Springs expansion opposed

Regular readers know we have always taken a firm line on Travellers sites across the Morley area. We have lead the successful campaign against the expansion of Cottingley Springs Travellers site and have had the Secretary of State call in the application for a Public Inquiry where it is likely to be buried because of its non compliance with Local and National Planning Policy. That Policy is to oppose large scale Travellers sites in favour of smaller family based sites - sites with fewer than 12 pitches.

This is why we were outraged to hear of a new planning application for a 55 pitch Travellers site on Valley Road in Morley. This is clearly an unacceptable application because it will overwhelm Morley with more Traveller families. Indeed Morley is the community more impacted upon by Cottingley Springs than any other community and the problems with that site are well documented and well understood by local residents.

It is clear that the Police can barely cope with the challenges of anti-social behaviour emanating form Cottingley Springs. Adding a larger Travellers site within couple of miles of Cottingley Springs would overwhelm local communities, undermine Morley Town centre and leave the Police with a problem it will be beyond their capacity to resolve.
In Planning Terms the site is inappropriate for this type of development. It is an industrial site which will be needed to support new businesses - creating the jobs we will need in the future. The road to the site is inadequate for caravans and the many industrial vehicles Travellers will bring to the site. It is isolated and too close to the railway line for any domestic use.
It's clearly not in the Travellers interest either. Many residents on Cottingley Springs will tell you that the site is too large and leads to all sorts of problems as different families continue to run feuds against each other. Smaller family sites avoid this problem.
The interesting thing will be the position of the Labour Party on this issue. They are renowned for being soft on travellers and - as long as they don't live in Labour Wards - they are quite happy to tolerate Travellers in other peoples Wards. Indeed for years they have bleated on about unauthorised sites but do nothing to share the problem across the City preferring to dump the problem on the Morley/Wortley area.
This cannot be allowed to go ahead and we have called a public meeting on Monday 12th May at 7pm at Morley Town Hall to form a campaign group to oppose it. I have had large numbers of e mails and phone calls opposing the site but we need to be unified to make sure we send a clear message that Morley will not become the dumping ground for Leeds' Traveller problem.