Travellers in town car park - why aren't they fined?

[funkyrobot]

A car park in my local town was swamped by travellers at the weekend. They arrived towards the end of last week, took over a whole car park and left on Sunday. Apparently, they left behind loads of rubbish that the council spent hours clearing up.

They also seemed to leave without a single ticket being issued by parking wardens. Why is this? Is it because they are of no fixed abode? If so though, how can they all be driving around in modern vehicles on public roads?

The police weren't interested and said it's a civil matter.

I'm wondering if I would be able to leave my vehicle in the car park all weekend and not get a ticket.

One thing of note from the weekend is the boom in broken TV, generator and chainsaw sales. I'm yet to find another mobile business who sells all of these things from one van.

[funkyrobot]

myvision said:

Was it this lot I'm away but have been sent this photo of my town and told they have currently set up residency.

It was a group on their way to Appleby horse fair.

Seems to be a few of them roaming around at the moment.

[funkyrobot]

Reardy Mister said:

By virtue of the fact they are "travellers", they have no address to which they can be pursued, no fixed asset against which to recoup debts and no means of reliably tracking them down. That's why they do it. If you're NFA, you're laughing. You can escape an awful lot of bureaucracy/fines/taxes/laws/etc just by being a renter, moving semi-regularly and not being on the electoral roll. Let alone driving a transit and moving to a new playing fields every two weeks.

How do they get their vehicles registered? If you have no fixed address, how can you have a logbook, tax, insurance etc?

Or do they have none of this.

[funkyrobot]

sc0tt said:

Where do you suggest they post the fines?

To the same address the vehicle documents go to.

[funkyrobot]

I've found out that they utilised the local swimming pool's communal showers etc. and trashed them. There was a load of blood in one of the sinks where someone had been shaving and made a mess.