A recent article in The Argus (May 18) stated that the South Downs National Park Authority had given the go-ahead for a permanent traveller site at Horsdean.

The official view is that such a site, which will add an extra 12 pitches, will ease the pressure of illegal encampments in Brighton and Hove’s parks. On the same page there was a photograph of travellers parked up in the Black Rock car park. There were 12 of them.

Now, unless these 12 vans are the same vans that the council spent nearly a quarter of a million pounds evicting from Stanmer Park, Sheepcote Valley, Black Rock and Waterfall and Preston Park, the effect of spending even more taxpayers’ money on a new facility for just 12 extra caravans will have a negligible effect on solving the problem of the illegal parking of caravans and their towing vehicles.

In the same edition, in the Comment column, it was said that “We can talk to each other all night but if the travellers have nowhere else to go in the city but for public parks, car parks and fields then what is there to discuss?”

I would suggest that good starting points would be to ask ‘Why always Brighton & Hove?’ ‘Do Bognor Regis, Littlehampton, Eastbourne, Bexhill, Hastings, and the rest of county's seaside towns, suffer the same problem at the same magnitude?; if not why not?’ Answers on a postcard please, addressed to Brighton & Hove City Council.

Eric Waters

Ingleside Crescent

Lancing