A TOTAL of about £5,000 is being spent on installing discrete barriers which should prevent a repeat of travellers taking over the area surrounding the war memorial in Low Moor in Bradford for unauthorised encampments.

Councillors acted after an incident last summer where the memorial was surrounded by caravans and children were seen playing on the war memorial, which was erected as a tribute to the area’s war dead.

After the travellers moved on, ward councillors started to look for ways to prevent the problem from being repeated and they came up with the plan to install a combination of fencing loops and bollards to prevent vehicles being driven onto the site, which remaining as unobtrusive as possible.

The cash has come from the Wyke ward budget and represents a substantial sum from the relatively small amount available each year, said Councillor David Warburton (Lab).

“When it happened, especially during 2014 when it was the commemoration of the start of World War I, I thought it was totally disrespectful,” he said.

Cllr Warburton also sits on a Bradford-wide panel which is looking for long-term solutions to the problem of incursions on to public land by travellers.

There had been 20 such incidents in Wyke since he joined the Council in 2006, he said, with clean-up costs averaging £3,000 each time.

“It has cost £60,000 which could have been used for Wyke for other things. It is annoying,” he said.