BASE HEADER

I write to you on the 2nd April re the proposed Travellers' sight on Birmingham Road.

I have received no reply so I am resubmitting it by email. Your acknowledgement would be appreciated.

Proposed Traveller Site at Oaklands Farm, Birmingham Road, Hatton, Warwick ref GT19

I have looked at your Local Plan document dealing with sites for Gypsies and Travellers and am dismayed to see that the above sight is considered to be a Green site.

Along with many other people, dog walkers, runners, walkers, cyclists and visitors generally I use the canal towpath for exercise and enjoyment. To consider putting a travellers' site right next door to the canal seems to me to be totally inappropriate. The Hatton Flight of locks is a very well known local landmark and tourist attraction and you are considering ruining it by placing such a site next to it.

Many users of the towpath use it in the evening and failing light to avoid having to use the dangerous Birmingham Road with its heavy traffic. I cannot believe that those users will feel comfortable using the towpath when there is such an encampment there. For one thing the Travellers tend to have out of control animals (dogs) which could easily attack a lone walker.

The other difficulty is that it would be nearly impossible to screen the site either from the canal or from the road so that it would be an eyesore on the busiest road into the town of Warwick. What a start for tourists!

Finally as a daily user of the junction of Ugly Bridge Road and the Birmingham Road I can assure you that it is a dice with death already as it is difficult to tell whether outward bound traffic is signalling to turn into Ugly Bridge Road or the Shell Garage and the rest of the traffic travels at speed in a fairly continuous stream. Turning back into Ugly Bridge Road from Birmingham Road is also something of a trial but would be very much worse with a busier access at Oaklands Farm.

In any case sighting a residential site next to a 24 hour light source doesn't seem very sensible.

I think you must agree that to use this site for this purpose would be against the public interest, detrimental to a heritage asset and produce a much more dangerous junction at Ugly Bridge Road. It would also, in my view, probably put the Travellers' children into an area where they could be severely injured or killed by the traffic on Birmingham Road and at the junction with Ugly Bridge Road.