Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
TUESDAY 22 JUNE 2004
MS SIOBHAN
SPENCER, MS
CATHERINE BEARD,
MR TOM
SWEENEY, MR
CLIFF CODONA
AND MR
CHARLES SMITH
Q40 Mr O'Brien: Ms Spencer is suggesting
there should be smaller private sites and Mr Smith is saying there
should be open-ended sites.
Mr Smith: I was not disagreeing
with what Siobhan says. I think there should be site provision,
and there is a need for different types of sites. There is a need
for small sites, family sites, a need for public sites, a need
for transit sites. There is also a need for what I would call
trailer parks, where anybody could pull on and off, like they
have in Australia and America and other countries. There is a
need for nomadic provision. It is always seen as something special
and I do not see why it should be.
Q41 Mr O'Brien: What facilities should
these sites provide?
Ms Beard: Each pitch should have
its own water supply and its own little toilet block. As now,
there are a lot of sites which have blocks of toilets on. Well,
they do not work, because, if you have 21 families on a site—and
when you say families, obviously you have a lot of children there—you
have these blocks of toilets which do not get cleaned out like
they should. They should be cleaned out at least—at the
very, very least—four times a day. That does not happen.
Because the owners won't clean them, they won't pay people to
clean them, therefore the people on the site cannot use them,
they are a health hazard. I believe on every site, private or
local authority, each pitch should have its own tap and its own
little toilet block. That does not cost a fortune. There has been
a lot of money spent on Honeypot Lane at Darlington. They have
had part of this £17 million grant. But what is happening
there is they are still only putting a toilet block up for those
people. I do not think that is right at all. These are a health
hazard, they really are.
Q42 Mr O'Brien: Mr Sweeney, do you
have a point on that?
Mr Sweeney: My point is that in
1968 when this law came in to build sites in this country to provide
for travellers and gypsies, it seemed very good then. It was the
start of something that should have been good, but it was left
there and it was never taken forward. In my view it is the only
community of people who have never been looked after and their
needs being met. All other communities in this country, regardless
of where they come from, as their families get married they are
provided with needs. Ours has never been provided for. As somebody
said earlier on there, 10 years, five years down the line, you
will have had so many people get married, and there will be families,
and there is no provisions provided for their needs.
Q43 Mr O'Brien: When a couple gets
married and they move on to a site, what would they expect to
be on a site?
Mr Sweeney: I would expect sites
to have running water, like has been suggested. I would like to
see proper toilets on them. Private sites are one thing. I am
not into that; I am here today at the lower end of the scale,
if you will, to represent people who cannot afford to buy sites
and are looking for local authority sites, and those must be run
by local authorities on a daily basis.
Q44 Chairman: Ms Spencer, what do
you think should be provided on a site?
Ms Spencer: Basically, the single
toilet facility per pitch because it runs better.
Q45 Mr O'Brien: On a pitch you want
a hard-standing.
Ms Spencer: Yes.
Q46 Mr O'Brien: How many caravans
would you wish to see on a hard-standing?
Ms Spencer: Most families will
pull the two trailers.
Q47 Mr O'Brien: Two trailers.
Ms Spencer: At least two trailers,
yes, because then you have a bedroom facility for the girls and
one for the boys. So you would want a pitch big enough for two
trailers.
Q48 Mr O'Brien: Power supply?
Ms Spencer: Yes.
Q49 Mr Clelland: If someone is living
in council provided accommodation, they have to look after it.
They have to clean it themselves and look after the environment
themselves.
Ms Beard: Yes.
Q50 Mr Clelland: Why is it different
on a site? Why should somebody else be cleaning the toilets and
cleaning the site?
Ms Beard: Because if you have
a block of toilets, say half a dozen toilets, and there are all
those people on that site using them, the people who own the site—there
are a lot of blocks on the private site, they just put blocks
up—they should have someone to go in there and clean them.
They are getting paid for that.
Q51 Mr Clelland: But if you have
individual toilets ...?
Ms Beard: If you have individual,
everybody cleans their own, they look after their own. We want
nice amenity blocks for them, where they could put a washing machine
in, have their own washing machine, have their own toilet. They
are done out then every day, or they do them out two or three
times a day. People like to clean their own, but you cannot expect
women to go in and clean a toilet block when everybody else has
been using it.
Mr Smith: I think to some extent
we are missing the point really, because we are asking for the
same facilities as people have in houses.
Ms Beard: Exactly.
Mr Smith: We need running water;
we need electric; we need sewerage. It might vary a little bit
depending on the site. If it is a transit site, I would say it
may be slightly different. If you are going to be there permanently,
then you want permanent connections. So there are some variations
but talking about who is going to clean the toilets is missing
the point really.
Q52 Chairman: That is the accommodation
side, but what about the open space? Quite often people want the
space to put their lorry on, or to put scrap on or whatever the
people are dealing in. Should these sites not only have a pitch
for the vans but also space for working?
Mr Smith: Personally I do not
think you should have scrap metal where people are living. I do
not think it is a good idea nowadays. I think on sites you should
be able to work, to some extent, providing it is clean work. We
have got to a point on some sites where women are making aprons
or something like that and they have been stopped from doing it
because they have a sewing machine in the trailer. I do not think
you should stop people doing that, but I am not sure—
Q53 Chairman: You do not think it
is necessary to provide a pitch with space for the vans and space
for people to do some work on?
Mr Smith: You need a space to
live. Travellers' lives are not just the job/home. It is not quite
as simple as that.
Q54 Chairman: No, but, traditionally,
when sites have been provided, quite a lot of local authorities
have felt it was necessary to provide a work space.
Mr Smith: They have, but it has
not always worked when it comes down to scrap metal and things
like that because people started bringing on cars and started
burning things and it has caused problems on the site.
Q55 Chairman: I understand the problems,
but you are saying that as far as you are concerned the pitch
should be living accommodation and the facilities that go with
that and not working space.
Mr Smith: That is not quite what
I am saying, no.
Mr Sweeney: Our problem is with
all sites, residential sites as they are known today, permanent
sites, as have been provided by local authorities, there is no
parking facilities within them, so they have been designed so
you park within your pitch. I live on a site that is under a flyover:
there is no playground; there is no parking but on the road; there
is nowhere else to park. Those are the things I would like to
see changed.
Q56 Mr Sanders: Who should be responsible
for providing sites?
Ms Beard: A lot of our people
do want to provide our own. The evidence is there in the planning
applications—which are continuously being refused—for
small family sites. Most of them want their own little family
sites. Obviously there is a need for the transit sites, and for
sites for people to go where people cannot provide their own.
I suppose there will be people who will be quite willing to provide
them. We do think the local authorities should be responsible
for some of them, but where someone does want to provide a bigger
accommodation for people then they should be encouraged to do
that. You will have people who can afford to do that. Obviously
a lot of people cannot.
Q57 Mr Sanders: Where you are not
trying to provide or are unable to provide who should? Are you
saying it should always be the local authority?
Mr Sweeney: People like myself
who live under local authorities, we depend on the local authority
to provide those needs for us.
Ms Spencer: The housing department.
Mr Codona: Could I say that I
have lived on an illegal camp for seven years now and I have worked
very, very hard with my local authority in every aspect of planning—I
have been part of the local plan—and actually got into the
whole complete system to find out what is wrong, why have I not
been allowed to be able to create a home for myself. And, even
though all these studies have been done with very eminent people—Dr
Robert Home and Dr Don Kenrick, IPPR studies, studies by the ODPM
itself that I took part in the consultations for this year—my
local authority still fight that they have got to build sites,
because they are terrified of losing their jobs. I think we have
been a long, long time . . . I commend this Committee for giving
us a chance to be here. We are gypsies and travellers. I cannot
read and write: if I could not speak to you, I could never give
my expressions over. We are so desperate for the planning system
to help us. I have never committed a crime in my life in this
country, I have no criminal record of any kind whatsoever, but
I am classed as a criminal because I have lived on an illegal
encampment for seven years. That cannot be right. There are many,
many hundreds of families like me. We are not asking for this
planning system to do something special for us; we are asking
for this planning system, please, to give us justice. We are trying
hard to evolve, to become responsible people of the country that
people want us to be. We want to pay our taxes. We do not necessarily
want to be council tenants, but there are people without money
who still have to be council tenants. We really do need the help
within the planning system to give us the guidance and the right
thing for us to do.
Mr Smith: We are asking for equality
with people in housing. There is private site provision; registered
social landlords, proper ones; local authorities; possibly a mixture
of the two; and other forms—just the same as housing. So
you can rent, you can buy, the same as other people have: you
can live in a flat, you can live here, you can live there, you
can choose. Once we have the open market on sites, the same as
housing, the problem is dealt with.
Mr Codona: There is something
else I am desperate to say as well, about disability. On our authority
sites in this country—and I travel all over the country—there
are no disabled facilities on any authority site in this whole
country. No more sites should ever be allowed to be built again
unless they have adequate disabled facilities. There are many,
many elderly people with hip problems who cannot walk, with arthritis,
with heart problems—with many, many disabilities in our
community—and they are just not on these sites and something
has to be done about it.
Q58 Chairman: I am getting a bit
worried about the time, so if we could have slightly shorter answers,
I would appreciate it.
Mr Smith: Can I come back on something,
please? There was something that was said earlier on—
Chairman: I will give you a chance to
come back at the end. I am getting worried about the time.
Q59 Mr Sanders: Is part of the problem
housing? If you look at the housing department, the housing department's
functions are all looking at the housing problem in terms of providing
a roof over someone's head, not providing grounds that they need.
Mr Smith: That needs to change.
That is the simple answer.
Ms Spencer: That needs to change.
I do feel that gypsy accommodation ought to come under housing.
Before, when it was under the district authorities, it comes under
environmental health as a problem. It is a problem that you just
have to push over the border, into somebody else's borders. It
is like each housing authority has to make an assessment of need,
I think. They should do, with the amendments on the Homelessness
Act. If you do not have a legal place to place your caravan, you
are homeless in law, so it should come under the housing department
and they should look at it and they should assess the need. They
should get some of these social housing people involved in looking
to identify land and to help us getting sites built.
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