TRAVELLERS have broken into a grain store site on the outskirts of York which is on the market for redevelopment.

The group were seen by local residents moving 12 caravans on to the 19-acre brown field site grain store site off Water Lane, Clifton, on Monday.

The site is owned by Government quango The Rural Payments Agency (RPA), which is in the process of trying to sell the land for an estimated £10 million.

The plot features eight former Royal Air Force hangars which, until recently, were used to store part of the European "grain mountain", but have stood empty for some months and are likely to be demolished. A resident of Woodland Chase, who did not want to be named, said she saw a man checking along the bottom of the chain link fence around the site on Sunday.

When she went back on Monday the padlock on the main gates had been broken and the caravans had moved in. "There are several families on there and kids running around," she said.

She said the road had been closed for repairs, and this had made it easier for the caravans to gain access to the site and park along the side of the normally busy main road on Water Lane.

A North Yorkshire Police spokesman confirmed they had been called to the site on Monday afternoon and had spoken to the caravan owners.

Christine Shepherd, of York Travellers' Trust, said she did not know the site had been occupied.

Mrs Shepherd said it highlighted the trust's calls, made in the Evening Press on Tuesday, to get a "transient" site for travellers coming into the city.

She said: "Travellers travel up and down the roadside and if local authorities provide sites we wouldn't have the level of complaints from the public and other people because they would have somewhere to go."

A spokesman for the RPA said: "We are aware that some travellers have gone on to the site and we are working together with our agents and legal advisors to get a court order to get them moved off."

Updated: 12:08 Saturday, November 13, 2004