Team tries to ban traveller horses from pitch

A Cardiff football team are organising a petition to rid their local park of stray horses, which continue to make the field hazardous to play on.

Earlswood Rangers of Rumney are planning to put a petition of local residents to the council in September, because they have to spend hours clearing their pitch on Greenway Park before they can play on it.

The horses are thought to belong to members of the traveller community residing at Shire Newton Park in Trowbridge. They have caused a problem on and off in the area for around 50 years.

Vaughan Gething, the Welsh Labour Assembly candidate for Cardiff South and Penarth, is supporting the petition.

He said: “There is a health and safety issue caused by the manure and the horses hooves are tearing up the pitch.”

In 2008, Cardiff Council employed Wales's first horse warden, Lucy Hamblett, to round up any of the stray animals creating a hazard to local residents, particularly in the Rumney, Trowbridge St Mellons areas.

Councillor for Trowbridge, Ralph Cook, was not aware of the current situation but has been involved in helping to tackle the problem on many previous occasions.

He has said he will be contacting the horse warden to notify her of the re-emergence of the issue.

Coun Cook said: “It is a problem that keeps coming back, and it always will because it relies on a particular community accepting responsibility for their horses.

 “There is a vested interest for them not to comply because they get free grazing.”