Travellers sent plumes of thick acrid smoke into the sky when they set fire to one of their old caravans after setting  up camp at an industrial estate in the Black Country.

A convoy of around six caravans has pitched up on wasteland at Bagnall Street Industrial Estate in Great Bridge.

Firefighters were called to the camp late yesterday afternoon to extinguish a burning caravan that had been set alight. Motorists on the busy Black Country New Road experienced plumes of smoke billowing into the air.

The crew from Tipton was called to extinguish the flames just off Chimney Road at 4.55pm.

A strong smell of smoke remained in the area afterwards.

It is not known how long the travellers have been living on the dead-end piece of land, near the Biffa Waste Disposal site.

Councillor Derek Rowley, Sandwell Council’s cabinet member for safer neighbourhoods, confirmed today the council will be going to court tomorrow to seek an eviction order.

The council has had to take action dealing with travellers in parts of the borough in recent months.

In January rubble weighing 25 tons was emptied around a Wednesbury industrial estate to act as a barrier stopping gipsies getting on the land.

Sandwell Council spent £8,000 moving 60 tons of rubbish from a piece of land off St Paul’s road which is also a hotspot for flytipping.

Meanwhile, work on a £1.6 million gipsy site in Tipton is to start within months.

The existing site in Brierley Lane will be cleared and facilities created on land next to it. Once completed the site will include 16 pitches, new amenity buildings and landscaping. Work is set to start in May.

The site will be screened from the road by hedges and trees with individual pitches fenced off, ample parking, paving and decking.

The total cost of the upgrade is £1,663,326 and is part of a national campaign to spruce up traveller sites across the country, to meet the Government’s Decent Homes Standard.