A SITE for travellers and gypsies is set to open near Liskeard.

Work to create a new access road and fenced arrival area was going on in the run-up to Christmas, and the facility is now ready to be used at South Treviddo, off the A38 near Horningtops.

A spokesperson for Cornwall Council said: ‘We are currently finalising the management contract, licence and operating procedures for the site.  It will open once all of these are in place.’

The council-owned field has been subject to repeated unauthorised encampments in recent years.

A planning application for a gated transit site with wash-blocks and on-site management was approved on appeal in 2016.

That scheme has yet to be realised but the council announced last year that an ‘emergency stopping place’ for travellers would open with portable toilets and temporary water supplies.

The local authority says it has a legal duty to provide emergency stopping places – and that the site would enable officers to guide traveller and gypsy families away from places such as car parks.

The site will be run by Cornwall Housing.

Rules exist around how long people can stay on the temporary sites, and Cornwall Councillor for Menheniot Phil Seeva has said that he would be ‘looking for the council to enforce these’.