August 29, 2014 4.00 pm This story is over 115 months old

Unauthorised camp in Lincoln park cost council £2k

Big losses: The City Council has lost around £2,000 turning away bookings after travellers settled at Hartsholme Park’s campsite.

Around 15 caravans arrived at the park on Tuesday, August 19. Photo: The Lincolnite

The City of Lincoln Council estimates it has lost approximately £2,000 in bookings after a group of campers illegally settled in Hartsholme Park last week.

As previously reported, the unauthorised campers pitched up in the city park’s pre-booked campsite on August 19.

The group of 15 caravans allegedly offered to pay for the pitches, but staff explained the site was booked for the holidays.

The park had to cancel bookings with scheduled campers and staff having to reimburse fees due to the illegal encampment.

With legal proceedings set to take place, the group eventually left on August 22.

Due to the incident however, the city council, which manages Hartsholme Park, has lost money.

Steve Bird, Assistant Director for Communities and Street Scene at the city council, said: “We have refunded a number of people who had paid a deposit but who were unable to visit due to the disturbance.

“We will consider further claims from anyone else inconvenienced if and when these are forthcoming.

“We would like to apologise again to those who had their camping visit to Lincoln spoilt, and to anyone who had their visit to the park disrupted.

“We would like to thank members of both the park’s Advisory Group and the park’s volunteer group, who did a fantastic job cleaning up the campsite with our park ranger on Saturday morning, collecting a considerable amount of litter.

“It’s too early to accurately assess the cost to ourselves in full, but early estimates are that we could have lost more than £2,000 in lost bookings over the whole bank holiday weekend.

“We will of course be reviewing our security measures to see whether we can prevent this happening again.

“The city council took prompt action to fulfil all its legal obligations necessary to enable it to begin formal legal proceedings against this illegal encampment, and we took all possible steps available to us to resolve the situation.”