COUNCIL officials and police are to discuss how to stop travellers camping in York after it emerged that four separate locations had been occupied.

Jane Mowat, head of community safety at City of York Council, has said that dealing with unauthorised encampments was putting unnecessary pressure on already over-stretched local authority budgets.

She told Independent Osbaldwick councillor Mark Warters: "We will be meeting with the police later in the month to look at how a recurrence of this can to some extent be prevented in future but again our powers are very limited, particularly where the problem arises on land which is not owned by the council."

A clean-up operation has taken place on Walmgate Stay, off Heslington Lane, after magistrates gave the council permission to remove the camp.

Residents living next to the site said the travellers were a disturbance and they should not have been there, and Cllr Warters has raised concerns about hygiene and refuse issues.

Travellers have also camped up recently on land owned by the University of York near the entrance to its Heslington East campus, St George's Field Car Park and York Business Park at Nether Poppleton.

A council spokeswoman said yesterday that the Poppleton and St George's Field encampments had now both been vacated.

Ms Mowat said the university had agreed the travellers could stay for seven days on its land.

She said council officials had reported they were not 'run-of-the-mill travellers,' but three large families -mainly Swedish and French- who were on holiday and had been refused access to private caravan sites as the group was too large and they did not want to split up.

She said the cars on site were brand new top-of-the-range Bentleys, Mercedes and BMWs, the occupants were very polite and the children 'spotless,' and there was no disorder or littering. They also seemed quite offended when asked if they lived in their caravans at home, saying they lived in houses.

Cllr Warters said he found it 'deeply worrying' that the university was allowing the travellers to remain on Greenbelt land designated as a landscape buffer zone to protect the residents of Badger Hill from the impact of the University development.

But a university spokeswoman said that, after a number of caravans had set up camp on fields at the side of the roundabout near to Field Lane, one of the entrances to Campus East, the university was complying with legal requirements and had served notice for them to move.