A GROUP of travellers have been evicted from a Bolton site after the council successfully applied for a court order to remove them.

However, although the 40-strong group left St Mark's Street at 11am yesterday, they moved just three miles to near the Warburtons bakery in Hereford Street, off Blackburn Road.

The travellers had been originally camped on car parks at the junction of St Mark's Street and Sidney Street for the last two months.

Officers were given the power by magistrates to forcibly remove the travellers with the police if they refused to leave, but they left by the deadline.

Businesses in the area have been left to foot the bill for the clean-up of the area, which is strewn with rubbish, furniture and gas bottles.

A Bolton Council spokesman said: "When officers went to the site at around 10am yesterday, the group were already packing up. They complied with the court order and had gone by 11am.

"If rubbish has been left on council-owned land, it is our responsibility to clean it up but if it is on private land, it is down to the businesses."

Bill Proudman, a director at Northern Realisations based at Albion Mill in St Mark's Street, said the area had been left in a terrible state.

He said: "It is absolutely scandalous. The car park is a real mess with gas bottles, bags of rubbish and even a three-piece suite."