THE leader of Pendle Council has criticised the time it is taking to remove a group of travellers from a beauty spot in Colne.

Around 25 caravans, housing about 60 travellers, took over the Ball Grove Park in Colne on Tuesday morning.

Since then, dozens of residents near to the beauty spot have telephoned the council and local councillors to complain about a wide range of nuisance and damage being caused by the travellers.

Councillor Alan Davies said that the council had approached the local county court on Wednesday to apply for a court hearing to start proceedings to remove the travellers.

But the first available day for the hearing is next Tuesday, one week after the travellers arrived on site.

Once the hearing has granted a court order, it must then be served on the travellers by bailiffs, who in turn will give two days for the travellers to move on.

If the travellers remain on the site, the bailiffs, in conjunction with the police, can then forcefully remove the travellers.

Coun Davies said: "These travellers are creating extensive damage to one of our best parks in Pendle. Motorbikes are being ridden over grassed areas and stones are being thrown at the ducks on the pond.

"The system is failing local people. The court system takes too long and means that travellers can have almost two weeks of creating havoc to an area before we, the local authority, can get them removed. These people will literally cost the local taxpayer thousands of pounds in officer time, court costs, bailiffs costs and more importantly repairing all the damage that they have caused.

"The police have powers to remove the travellers straight away but refuse to do this despite the police in Hyndburn having moved these travellers on last week."

Coun Davies said he now feared the travellers may not now be removed before the end of next week.

A spokesman for Lancashire Constabulary said: "We are aware that the travellers are on this land in Colne and we are monitoring the situation. They are on council land and the council are going through the courts to remove them. We wouldn't remove them unless there was a public order issue and we are not aware of them being moved on last week as suggested."