I read your article (The "cheapest view" from £16m street, April 30) on the motorised luxury caravans left on the Common road with great interest. As a fairly frequent visitor to these roads for the past 14 years, with my dog I would park on the road, and take a two hour walk around the Common. Then, a few months ago, not just for the past month as your article states, parking became increasingly difficult as just one of these vehicles would occupy parking spaces for three or perhaps even four cars. I would see that these vehicles never seemed to move and I took the view that extremely selfish individuals were using these roads, which offer unrestricted, free parking, as long term autumn/winter storage spaces for these huge vehicles.

I was so irritated by this that a few months ago I wrote to Stephen Hammond asking that moves be made to investigate the problem and have these vehicles removed. All the responses that I received came from Sally Hammond, really saying that neither the council or the common administrators felt that they could do anything about it. ( I'm afraid that other points that I have made to Stephen Hammond have had similar negative results- a time wasting exercise if there ever was one!)

My view, and was expressed in the letters, was that in effect these vehicles had been abandoned by their owners and could be dealt with by the local authority under legislation provided for dealing with abandoned vehicles. All that would be needed was a notice fixed to each vehicle requiring its removal within seven days, by the owner, or the removal would be done by the local authority, stored at the owners expense, or sold to recover expenses. In my opinion that would have very quickly brought about an end to a problem, which has very definitely showed signs of increasing over the years. In fact, within a few more years, those roads could be full of similar vehicles enjoying free winter parking.

Peter Barrett

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