A COUNCIL leader has promised action to upgrade a “slum” travellers site but warned it will not happen soon.

Kate Hollern made the promise after Mary Young from the Ewood encampment attended Blackburn with Darwen’s Council’s Executive Board.

The travellers had already sent the borough bosses a petition calling for improvements.

Mrs Young told the meeting there was no plumbing and drainage, to their static caravans meaning children and young people had to go out in all weathers for a shower or to the toilet in the amenity block.

She said: “Our site looks like a slum.

“It looks like a condemned place where people have no hope for the future.”

She complained about lack of privacy, football supporters urinating in view of children and “rats as large as small dogs”.

Mrs Young said residents were hardworking British Gypsys, from a centuries-old community who paid their taxes and sent their children to school.

Many older people and youngsters were falling sick from the poor living conditions, she added.

Deprived of the chance to travel and camp on the roadside they had settled at Ewood and deserved proper housing standards like everyone else, she said.

Cllr Hollern said: “I agree with you the site is a slum.

“We will do something to upgrade it but it won’t be overnight.

“We have no magic wand to so this. We have not money to act soon but we will do it.”

Cllr Hollern promised that she, Ewood councillor Maureen Bateson and officers of the borough would come to a meeting on the site to discuss with residents to see what to could be done quickly and agree a longer term plan.

Mrs Young added: “We live in our trailers out of choice, but that does not mean we should live in the dark ages.”

Council neighbourhoods boss Yusuf Jan Virmani said when the site was modernised in 2002, residents wanted it to stay as a transit rather than permanent site so no plumbing was installedput inmade to provide direct plumbing to caravans.

He said installing the foul drainage to each pitch ‘would require major investment and modification of the site’.

Mrs Young said she was not aware of any residents who were still on the site being consulted.

She added that residents were also concerned about the construction of a new road close to the site, part of the Pennine Reach scheme Ewood Gyratory upgrade, endangering their children.