PLANS to establish a new travellers’ site just outside Pucklechurch have been submitted.
Applicant Jason McDonagh has applied for permission to create pitches for two mobile homes and two touring caravans, with a stable block and ‘day room’ on land he owns opposite the entrance to the established Meadow View travellers’ site on Shortwood Road.
Mr McDonagh, who lives at Meadow View, says the site was last used as hardstanding by South Gloucestershire Council’s highways department during recent roadworks to create a new dual use path between Pucklechurch and Shortwood.
The plans include parking spaces for two cars and two light goods vehicles.
As the Voice went to print, 13 objections had been lodged to the plans, including from Pucklechurch Parish Council, which has raised seven arguments against the plans, and neighbouring Siston Parish Council, which has raised 11.
They say the site is in the Green Belt and in the Siston Conservation Area, is outside the boundary of existing settlements, has not been identified as a “safe-guarded Gypsy & Traveller site” and is on a side of the road that “has a distinctly rural character”.
Siston Parish Council said the proposed access to the site crosses the cycle and footpath the council finished earlier this year, which was specifically built on the south side of Shortwood Road to avoid crossing the entrance to the Meadow View site.
The parish council said: “There are concerns from residents that accidents may occur when using the newly-laid cycle path, and money spent on this pathway will be wasted, if it is no longer a safe pathway.”
It called for the hardstanding on the site, which has been covered with waste including “large electrical household items”, to be returned to its “former natural state”
South Gloucestershire Boyd Valley ward councillor Marilyn Palmer said tipping had been carried out on the site and trenches had already been dug to install services, which had spoiled the surface of the new path.
She said: “This is a totally inappropriate site for any form of development and it must be refused and enforcement action taken.”
An objection has been lodged by South Gloucestershire Council’s landscape officer.
The plans can be viewed on the planning section of the council’s website by searching for application P24/02055/F, or at tinyurl.com/yywsdzsf.