A BUSINESSMAN today called for a change in the law after he paid travellers £1,200 to get off his works car park rather than face weeks of legal battling.

Jim Ashworth has owned Sawley Fine Arts on Burnley Council's flagship Network 65 for a just few weeks.

He spent £250,000 transferring his business from Great Harwood to the purpose-built unit to store goods with pet pictures including china, coasters and key fobs.

The travelling visitors will have cost him £5,000 by the time he finishes making his premises secure. The cost includes the payment to leave, new fences, £1,200 for poles to block entrance to the car park and £800 for security guards.

He said: "I am not advocating paying travellers to move on but I was going abroad on business and I couldn't afford to leave them on my site. There needs to be a change in the law."

Mr Ashworth said he rang police when he found eight static caravans, vans, cars and three trucks but they said there was nothing they could do.

He said: "Then I rang the council and was told the officer that deals with travellers only works part-time and wasn't in. "The travellers said they had assumed the building was not occupied, I said that now they could see it obviously was and would they leave.

"They said no chance, they knew the law and and it was going to be at least two weeks before they would go."

Mr Ashworth said another traveller said if he paid them £2,000 they would be off in 10 minutes.

Mr Ashworth said: "My reaction was no way and I called the police again and asked to speak to an inspector. My call got lost in the system.

"So offered the travellers £500 to go. Then we got into this Dutch auction until they agreed to £1,200 and I wrote a cheque out and sent my wife to the bank to withdraw the cash.

"They left two vehicles on the car park until I had given them the money."

Mr Ashworth said he could not risk leaving them on the car park while he sought a legal eviction notice and he was concerned for his family and staff who worked on the premises.

"In a few hours the mess they had created was horrendous, if it had gone on for two weeks it would have created a major problem and I couldn't risk the windows being put through," he said.

The insurers were also due to visit and Mr Ashworth said he could not risk the travellers still being on the car park. He added: "There should be a change in the law but it seems nobody wants to bother and there is no concern about it whatsoever. I don't want my premises to look like Fort Knox, but I can't risk them coming back."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.