POLICE have defended the way in which they responded when travellers with eight caravans illegally occupied vacant industrial estate land at Leeming Bar at the weekend.

Angry villagers and business leaders on the estate in Leases Road said local life was seriously upset and disrupted by the aggressive anti-social behaviour of travellers who arrived last Friday and finally left on Tuesday.

It was the second such occupation of unsold estate land since 1999, when a similar event involving six caravans passed off peacefully after three days.

This time, it was said, different travellers evicted by court order from a site at Knaresborough threatened or intimidated local people, fought among themselves on an industrial estate road, damaged business property and left part of the estate covered in litter. A pub and shop in the village were closed for a time as a precaution.

One traveller was arrested and given police bail in connection with an alleged assault on another who needed hospital treatment.

At one point on Saturday morning police cordoned off the estate area and brought in an armed response vehicle, but a spokesman said authority given to officers to take arms out of locked containers was not implemented.

There were local claims that a firearm had been discharged among travellers but the police spokesman said: "There was a bang but no one has seen a firearm, no one has been hurt by a firearm and no one has made any allegations of a firearm.

"The commander at the scene decided it was not in the interests of public safety to try to get enough officers to go into that area and try to find a firearm."

Businessman Mr Tim Snowdon, who said he had a window smashed at his premises, thought police should have taken a firmer line with the travellers after they arrived.

"The police mishandled it. They took a softly softly approach. It was nothing to do with individual bobbies but with the people in charge at Newby Wiske. If these travellers had turned up on the doorstep at Newby Wiske I'll bet they wouldn't have been there for four days."

A police spokesman said: "We do the best thing for the public good and this was approached in that way. Confrontation and oppressive behaviour is an infringement of travellers' human rights. We had to find a balance in coming to a sensible solution.

"In this case a solution had to involve not just an unpleasant group of people behaving very badly but sympathy for business people and residents who have suffered. We had to stop anything really bad happening.

"This was very difficult and we are not happy that businesses suffered, but we feel that on balance it worked well.

"We could have stormed in and not come up with a result. We believe we took the right approach in particularly difficult circumstances. We tried to find the result best for everyone."

l Business people call for better estate security: page 13.