Gipsies who set up camp on land owned by Bradford Council are leaving ratepayers with thousands of pounds in clean-up costs.

In the latest incident the Council spent £2,000 clearing playing fields next to the Sedbergh Youth Club in Low Moor after travellers took over the land.

Around 60 to 70 vans and caravans spent three nights on the site, run by the Council's recreation department, before leaving it strewn with debris on Sunday.

Private contractors hired by the Council were called in yesterday to clear the site of rubbish - which included half-a-dozen three-piece suites and two empty gas cylinders.

This year Council officers have played a cat-and-mouse game with groups of gipsies who have led them from one site to another, leaving behind a trail of waste.

In early June around 30 caravans and a collection of cars and trucks appeared on Emsley Recreation Ground in Marshfield and swiftly filled it with disused sofas.

After being thrown off the land by the Council the travellers moved to Peel Park in Undercliffe and then, after complaints from residents, on to the Bolton Woods Junior Football Club.

Richard Wixey, the Council's director of environmental cleansing, said each time their legacy has been a trail of rubbish to clear up. He said clear up costs were starving other beneficial projects of funds.

Mr Wixey said: "Obviously we would prefer not to spend money cleaning up because it stops us doing the maintenance work on our land.

"If we've got to spend £2,000 clearing up a site like this we may not be able to plant some trees or improve fencing.

"But we also get a lot of fly-tipping, with the latest on waste ground in Leeds Road, and we will have to clean that. So it's not just a problem associated with travellers."

Mr Wixey said there were seven Council tips for household waste in the district and urged everyone to use the facilities.

And it is not just the Council which is suffering.

When travellers left the former Berwicks garage in Canal Road littered with rubbish it was owners Innes England who forked out for the clean-up. And members of the Phoenix Park Golf Club were left gobsmacked when they spotted gipsy children playing in bunkers after their parents set up camp in the car park shared by the club and the Odeon Cinema in Thornbury.