Travellers cause pounds 1m damage at site

TRAVELLERS holding an illegal festival near Winchester yesterday wrecked a refuse incineration plant, burning down part of the site and causing damage estimated at up to pounds 1m. But last night fears of a confrontation with police faded as the travellers started to disperse from the area.

Earlier, they had smashed

windows, damaged machinery, daubed graffiti, wrecked staff locker rooms and showers and set fire to the weighbridge office which was gutted in the blaze.

Firemen had to be escorted by police to the fire at Otterbourne because of fears that some of the 1,000 travellers on the land, owned by Hampshire County Council, might become violent.

The incineration plant is the only one of its type in Hampshire and is likely to be out of action for some time. John Ekins, the county surveyor, said yesterday: 'The whole plant has been ransacked and totally damaged. We are in for up to pounds 1m to repair it.'

Last night, Hampshire police served travellers at the village with notices under section 39 of the Public Order Act 1986 requiring them to move off the four-acre site. Inspector Steve Lawrence said travellers were 'trickling off the site quietly'. He would not give details about the numbers of police or travellers involved. He said 'a substantial number' of

officers from Surrey, Sussex, Wiltshire and Thames Valley were drafted in to provide back-up.

Police wearing black boiler suits, balaclavas and helmets took over the site shortly after 7pm. They arrived in a convoy of more than 20 transit vans.

Earlier in the day police adopted a low-profile approach hoping to avoid a repetition of the clashes on Friday and Saturday in which at least 12 officers were injured and six police vehicles damaged. Road blocks were maintained but police stayed away from the occupied Romsey site and went into the Otterbourne one only when the fire started. Several hundred people drifted away from there during the day.

The latest round of the summer battle between the travellers and police and local residents has brought noise and inconvenience to those living near the festivals.

Grace Lewington, 79, who has lived opposite the Otterbourne site for 30 years said: 'The noise is terrible, the music just goes boom, boom, boom all night.

'It's such a quiet place to live normally and the land they have camped on usually looks lovely, it's all so beautifully mowed.'

The incinerator plant is hidden from the road by trees in front of which are fields where the travellers are encamped. The area has become strewn with litter since their arrival.