Staff at Bradford's new £3 million immigration appeal Court are in a legal battle of their own - to reclaim their car park from travellers.

Employees are being forced to abandon their cars and walk to work after travellers moved caravans on to the car park of the Phoenix Court complex in Thornbury.

Acting centre manager Paul Ratchford said: "Travellers have been in the car park for about two weeks now but we have taken legal action and hope to get them moved off as soon as possible.

"There's been about five caravans parked up every day. It has been more some days and sometimes it 's been less - but what is for sure it that it has been inconvenient for the people who work here. There's quite a lot of rubbish about, from bits of paper to an abandoned gas cylinder but of course it has not necessarily all come from the travellers."

Recently other travellers had camped in the playground of the former Thornbury Primary School, opposite the Immigrations Appeals Court main entrance on Old Leeds Road.

Those travellers have now moved on from the site, which developers want to turn into shops. The schoolyard they left behind remains strewn with discarded debris and human waste.

A Bradford Council spokesperson said: "We have been at Thornbury First School today to assess the situation.

"It has been left in a disgraceful state with rubbish, including human waste, strewn around the area.

"Our cleansing and asset management departments are now working together to clean up the site and secure it as soon as possible. Because the court car park is private land and not owned by the Council we have not been involved in what's happening on that site. Our concern was with the school. Our information is that the travellers who were at the school have now moved to the playing fields at Odsal.

"We will take legal action to remove them from there following our normal guidelines."

Those guidelines state that once the Council becomes aware that its land is being illegally occupied, a Gipsy Liaison Officer will visit the site and try to persuade the travellers to leave.

When travellers refuse to move on after such a request, legal proceedings are started in the County Court, under the Civil Procedure Rules 1998, to regain possession of the land.

If the court order is granted, the trespassers are given a date by which they must leave, usually the same day.

Should they still refuse to go then, the Court's bailiffs can be called in to tow their vehicles away.