Walsall Council will provide travellers with bins
Large bins could be provided on traveller-hit sites in Walsall to save the cash-strapped council tens of thousands of pounds in clear-up costs.
Walsall Council is looking at placing the large wheeled bins, known as euro bins, on illegal camp sites to encourage occupants not to dump mess.
Travellers have already cost the cash-strapped council more than £15,000 this year in clean-ups and managing the sites.
Blakenall Councillor Pete Smith has led calls for the council to put the bins out once informed about an illegal settlement.
He believes it would cost around £13 to pick up and dispose of one of the bins.
Council leader Mike Bird confirmed the authority would now look at the option.
He said: "It is a step forward, the cost is really minimal in relation to the benefits that occur.
"It will be discussed at our next meeting with senior officers."
Councillor Smith said: "Once a site is occupied by a traveller encampment, environmental health enforcement should attend with licensing enforcement.
"Once the size of the camp has been established, environmental health enforcement should engage with the travelling group and arrange for a euro bin, or a suitable number of bins to be delivered to the site for any domestic waste to be deposited in during their stay.
"This facility will save the council large sums of money each year, especially over the summer months that tend to attract traveller encampments."
The borough has been plagued by traveller camps since the spring with more than a dozen caravans at a time settling on some locations for days at a time.
Locations have included Goscote Lodge Crescent, Delves Common and Broadway West Playing Fields.
In some cases vans have been on the same site on more than one occasion.
A person carrying a gun and geese going missing were among more than 100 complaints made about a group of travellers on land between Stubbers Green Road and Lichfield Road, near Shelfield, earlier this year.
In a bid to reduce the problem of caravans settling on land illegally the council is looking at creating almost 30 permanent sites over the next few years.
But residents who would be affected by some of the proposed locations are up in arms, and have joined forces against plans to use the old Darlaston Multi-Purpose Centre site.
It comes after homeowners near Broad Lane Gardens, Bloxwich – identified as a possible site by the local authority – announced they had also started a petition.
