A HUMAN rights battle is looming over plans to ban a travelling family from parking alongside highways across York.

City of York Council is pressing ahead with an application for an unprecedented High Court injunction against the travellers, as complaints continue to pour in from members of the public.

But a lawyer appointed by the family has warned that the "exclusion order" would be opposed on the grounds that it threatened the families' traditional way of life.

Solicitor Julian Pheby said the use of Human Rights legislation would be considered in fighting the injunction. York Council's regulation unit manager Richard Haswell, said officers had been authorised earlier this year by councillors to seek a High Court injunction banning the travellers from camping alongside highways across the whole of the council's area.

He said the matter had been temporarily delayed until after a big family funeral had taken place.

"We were asked by members to reassess the needs to see if anything had changed, but nothing has changed. They are still on the roads and we continue to get complaints from residents about the travellers and their horses. We have had about 20 this week."

He stressed that the animals tethered in the Hull Road and Bridlington Road area were not owned by the family at the centre of the injunction action.

A report to councillors in March said that the authority had received more than a hundred complaints in the past two years, many of them about the damage caused to hedgerows by horses tethered at the roadside.

Mr Pheby said he could not respond to specific allegations about the travellers, but stressed he would not condone any antisocial or criminal behaviour.

Updated: 10:56 Tuesday, May 07, 2002