false alarm' A EUROPEAN legal ruling which sparked fears that gypsies would be able to pitch camp wherever they wished was a false alarm.

Bolton Euro MP Gary Titley, asked to see the European Human Rights Commission ruling when he was at Strasbourg this week.

He discovered that British newspaper stories claiming Eurocrats were giving caravan travellers carte blanche to occupy any open space they wanted was a misunderstanding.

Mr Titley found, after poring over the commission's ruling, that the judgement related solely to a woman who had been refused permission to site her caravan on land she had bought near the Prime Minister's home in Cambridgeshire.

The commission decided the woman's rights had been violated by the refusal of the Cambridge planning authority to consider her application.

The ruling made front page news in the Daily Mail and was reported in several other papers.

But it was the claim in the Mail that gypsies and travellers would be able to occupy any land without fear of being moved on that sent shock waves through Bolton, after a summer of turmoil with caravan travellers.

Mr Titley said: "The commission's finding, by a majority of seven to five, still has to be endorsed.

"Even if it is, it certainly does not give travellers the right to camp on playing fields, open spaces or wherever they wish.

"I suspected that the stories were inaccurate, so I made a point of asking to see a transcript of the ruling."

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