Park trees destroyed
This post make for grim reading.
In December 2025, members of a traveller camp at Perry Park were witnessed cutting down 23 trees that had been planted as part of the restoration of the park following the Commonwealth Games.
Those trees weren’t little saplings, they were sizeable trees that required machines to plant - and they’d been specially selected to add variety and visual interest to the park, and to help screen the large tarmac coach park which sits in the middle of the main grass field (and which the council has retained despite it supposedly being temporary).
Traveller visits to the park are nothing new - according to Birmingham City Council's records, there have been 26 traveller camps on the park since the Commonwealth Games concluded in August 2022.
And it is absolutely legitimate to ask whether Birmingham provides sufficient suitable official sites for travellers, with appropriate facilities.
But that is a completely different issue - the council estimates that the criminal damage inflicted by some of the travellers who camped on the park in December 2025 will cost around £30,000 to repair.
After each encampment, council officers and local volunteers work to clean up the park to make it safe for families, dog walkers, etc to use - often including bags of rubbish thrown into the stream, opened food tins and glass bottles strewn across the area, and occasionally debris from fires.
Astonishingly, despite 26 traveller camps on its records, council officers tell us that they haven't discussed measures to deter further encampments, although options are available such as a Public Spaces Protection Order (which can place restrictions on a defined area to prevent persistent detrimental activity).
A form of injunction like a PSPO might sound harsh at first, but when the council has ignored the issues arising from most of the 25 previous camps, and now faces a £30,000 bill to fix the criminal damage caused by people from the latest camp, something must be done.
That’s why we’re working with our local councillors to ask the council officers to wake up to the problem, improve security at the access points to the park, and consider the clear case for applying for an injunction.