Bohemia Village Voice

Where the proposed site will be located - marked in black.

In the days since the meeting at Horntye Park Sports Complex, the Bohemia Village Voice has spoken to several of those residents living closest to the proposed Summerfields site. One resident of Ellis Close has recently moved there from Fairlight, where she said she had had first-hand experience of living near to Travellers. She claimed that they had left a lot of ‘mess’ and were responsible for ‘thieving’, though she did not elaborate on what she meant by this. Another new arrival in the same close said that she thought she had moved to a quiet cul-de-sac, only to find that people already used it to cut through from Bohemia Road to the town centre. The presence of a Traveller community would only increase that traffic, she said. A third resident we spoke to in Ellis Close thought that the site was rather small for the intended purpose and was also at the ‘entrance to the town centre’. She
said she had no personal experience of living close to Travellers, but she
was led to believe that a ‘certain
amount of rubbish goes along with that lifestyle’.
  One resident of Redmayne Drive raised a number of objections to the Summerfields site. For one thing,  he said, what was the point of choosing a site where the land first needed to be flattened, with all the cost that that involved? On the other hand, he wondered whether all the money available to the Council through the government’s Gypsy Sites Refurbishment Grant Scheme would  be needed to set up the site, which led him to speculate that some of the money might be set aside for other purposes. He also suggested that, if the Summerfields site was selected, it might be part of a wider strategy aimed at closing the leisure centre, thus allowing the Council to turn the entire site over to redevelopment. He also said that Travellers deserve to be treated with the same respect as any other group of people, but that this site would not be the right solution to the problem.
  These are some of the arguments put forward to the Voice, and it has to be said that we’ve yet to hear anyone in favour of this proposal. The Council plans to make a decision on one of the three possible sites within the next two weeks, and intends to submit a grant application by the end of this month. Let us know what you think by dropping off a note to us at the offices of Bohemia Village Voice (see box, page 6) by Friday 23rd February. We will make sure the Council hear the opinions of Bohemia residents before it makes a final decision. [JB]