WITH a budget that's been blitzed by Government cash cuts, the last thing Bolton Council needs is a bill for £50,000 for cleaning up and protecting unofficial gipsy encampments in the district. Yet that is what it cost them last year. And clearing the mountain of debris this week from a site in the Croal Irwell Valley, after the gipsies were there for about two weeks, means the ratepayers will again have to pick up the tab.

Boulders have been used to try to prevent these and other travellers from illegally camping on various sites. But with the cost of this and clearing up after the travellers, plus European Commission rulings supporting the gipsies' traditional lifestyle, the local authority must feel they are literally between a rock and a hard place.

Obviously the one official gipsy site set up in 1973 at Moses Gate is inadequate. But any suggesions more sites being created in Bolton will immediately have residents shouting "not in our backyard!". So the headache will not go away. What a pity it cannot be dumped, along with debris the gipsies leave behind, on the EC doorstep in Brussels.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.