BANDS of travellers have been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities across Bournemouth and Christchurch.

The groups have been frustrating attempts to evict them by moving between sites in the same areas.

In Bournemouth, travellers who had been at Fisherman's Walk, Southbourne, have moved to two sites at Durley Chine.

A group who were at Warren Edge car park have moved to Shelley Park - just after a previous camp was ousted from the same site.

In Christchurch, a band of travellers quit a side near the Stony Lane roundabout at Burton, only to move a few yards along the road. They then moved to the Avon Causeway at Sopley.

With each move, council officers have to re-start the process of assessing their health and social needs before they can evict them.

Cllr Adrian Fudge, a member of Bournemouth Borough Council's cabinet, said: "All the time we've got to recognise their rights. It's about time they recognised the rights of the people that live in the area."

He added: "They're playing the law. They know we've got this situation that every time they turn up on a new site we've got to assess their needs."

Mark Smith, the council's head of tourism, said: "I think what we're seeing here is a national problem and if it's going to be sorted out in the long run it needs a national solution which can only come from legislation."

He added: "I understand people getting upset about it when they see people using, for example, car parks and not paying and also creating some difficulties in that car park that have got to be cleared up at local people's expense."

Some of the travellers had looked after the sites but others had left a mess behind them, he said.

Villagers in Burton have called for a change in the law after the travellers at Stony Lane left landowners Meyrick Estates with a hefty bill for legal costs and a clear-up.

Parish councillor Howard Mackenzie-Cook said: "If the law precludes the swift eviction from private, including council-owned, land, then the law is an ass."

Burton Parish Council chairman Judy Jamieson said: "The government has to grasp this nettle because we are having this trouble every year."