Travellers at an authorised Kinross-shire camp have been given just weeks to make a series of long overdue improvements or face being booted off the site.
Families at the remote Crook Moss site, near Fossoway, are being threatened with sanctions by Perth and Kinross Council after failing to comply with a series of enforcement notices.
Councillors were asked to give the Travelling community a further year to bring the site up to standard. But members of the development management committee insisted by a vote of seven to three that certain conditions must be met within two months.
Travellers have now been given until mid-November to address regular complaints about noise nuisance, with some residents claiming they are being kept awake into the early hours by loud power generators.
The caravan owners are also being ordered to plant trees and hedges around the site boundary to make it less of an eyesore. A new access road will also need to be built.
It has also emerged that the travellers face further enforcement action after planning officers discovered the creation of three new unauthorised pitches on the edge of the site.
A follow-up report on the community’s progress will be brought before councillors in the new year, when they will decide if further action needs to be taken.
The Crook Moss families have been given 12 months to continue talks with utility companies and get the site connected to mains water, drainage and electricity. If the conditions are not met, a fresh enforcement notice could be issued, effectively revoking planning permission. If approved, it will be the first time such action has been taken by a council in Scotland.
The land was granted retrospective planning permission for five pitches in 2013, despite objections from residents.
Kinross-shire councillor Dave Cuthbert said he was contacted by a resident who was kept up until 4am on Tuesday because of a noisy generator being used on the site.
“This, to me, is one of the critical issues and has been causing a lot of problems locally,” he said. “It really now is a question of what can be done to prevent this noise being a problem.”
He said that landscaping work should have been done straight after initial planning consent was granted.
Enforcement officer Eddie Jordan told the committee that talks between the travellers, the council and the utility companies are progressing well.
He said there is genuine “goodwill” between at least two of the families to get the site up to scratch. The committee heard that the original applicants had given up control of the site, which is now being used by five individual families.