DOZENS of protesters are expected at a Burnley council meeting tonight to hand over a petition outlining their opposition to three proposed travellers’ sites.

The campaigners, led by Steve Lupton, of Cog Lane, have collected 1,385 signatures calling for the three locations – Marlborough Street, Lawrence Avenue and Heald Road – to be reconsidered.

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Members are due to debate the borough’s Local Plan at a full council meeting tonight, with some residents claiming public consultation was ‘inadequate’.

Burnley’s Liberal Democrat MP Gordon Birtwistle and council leader, Labour’s Mark Townsend, have already clashed over whether or not a permanent travellers’ site is a legal requirement.

The petition is entitled: “To stop all development plans with regard to building three permanent traveller sites in the borough of Burnley.”

Mr Lupton, 50, said he had been calling door-to-door in the Cog Lane area and had yet to meet one person who supported a site nearby. He said: “A group of us called at more than 600 homes on the estate, and also spoke to local businesses like Moorhouse’s, and hardly anyone was aware of the plans.

“I have lived in this area all my life but if this goes ahead no one is going to want to live here. The price of my own house will go down, and to be honest I wouldn’t want to move in next door to a traveller site.”

Initial consultations on the Local Plan were held from February 17 to March 31, while the latest round of public meetings will end with a drop-in session at Burnley Town Hall from 5pm to 7pm tomorrow.

A motion tabled by Coun Townsend to go before tonight’s council meeting warns that Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and the Planning Inspectorate could penalise the authority if it ditched the plans, but Mr Birtwistle said it was the council’s own fault that it now had to include the sites.

The motion reads: “Whilst this council respects the rights of gypsies and travellers and their chosen way of life, we are determined to support residents in their right not to have their neighbourhoods disrupted by anti-social behaviour that sometimes arises around unauthorised encampments.”