Memorandum by Ann S Dean (GTS 50)
MANAGEMENT OF
UNAUTHORISED CAMPING
1. This Memorandum is based on voluntary
work which I have done mainly with Romany and Gypsies of Irish
descent on and off from 1993 onwards, because I have been horrified
at the injustice of blocking off all the places where Gypsies
used to camp and constantly evicting them sometimes every few
days, so that many grow up illiterate. The best way and only effective
way to reduce unauthorised camping is to have enough permanent
legal sites with secure tenancies not licenses which allow the
tenants for an affordable rent to travel when they wish to visit
relatives, do seasonal work in the summer, go to Horse Fairs etc.
For Travellers who do not want a permanent site
or are waiting for one Transit Sites and a greater degree of toleration
are the answer as recommended in the government guidance, but
many Councils are blocking off the pieces of land where Travellers
were tolerated in the past.
Consequences of Extended Families
A. Gypsies live in extended families of
around five to 25 usually one room caravans. They say that they
would feel "lonesome" and insecure or vulnerable if
split up into nuclear families. (Racist attacks with fire bombs
give them good reason to feel vulnerable.)
B. Parents of School Age children, the elderly,
the disabled and those with bad hearts need and want permanent,
preferably family sites, with room to add a few extra caravans
when boys and girls grow old enough to need separate caravans
or when they get married.
C. Planning law should allow for this expansion.
D. The law should NOT say that a Gypsy ceases
to be a Gypsy because he is on a permanent site as only a camp
site allows the extended family to stay together. Only a camp
site allows the elderly and disabled to stay with their family
and stay out of an expensive old people's home.
E. If Gypsies need to be tolerated, the
whole of the extended family needs to be tolerated as otherwise
the sick person granted toleration will leave with the others.
(It is common for the enforcement officer in charge of evictions
to do the welfare checks. It would be far better if a Health Visitor
or someone from the Traveller Education did them.)
2. The Save the Children Fund in its Book
No Future and the Children's Committee of the United Nations'
Report on the Right to Education have both said that the shortage
of permanent camp sites is denying British Gypsies a proper education.
(Both publications are available on the Internet).
3. Most of the Gypsies I have spoken too
are desperate for a permanent site so that their children can
get a proper schooling and not grow up illiterate or semi literate.
Permanent family sites for five to 20 caravans cost very little
to manage, so why does the ODPM not include new permanent sites
in its grants and also not allow Housing Associations to provide
them?
4. I also talked in 2003 with a Bargee or
Water Gypsy who told me how the Waterways Board had altered the
rules about moorings and how far they had to travel each day.
This has damaged their children's schooling and had driven many
of them into houses. Could the Committee study this issue?
5. The facts below give some reasons why
the "safeguards" in government guidance on unauthorised
camping are being ignored both by many Local Authorities and by
many Police forces.
6. Local Authorities do not deny that they
were ordered to stop housing Homeless Families with children in
Bed and Breakfast, but they do say they need not follow the guidance
on unauthorised encampments. Why cannot a similarly firm order
be made that they and the Police must follow the guidance not
to evict school age Gypsy children for several weeks or babies
under six weeks etc, or even better that homeless Travellers in
priority need because of children, health problems or old age
should not be offered only bricks or mortar but a far cheaper
camp site?
7. A similarly firm order is needed to state
that Local Authorities must obey the guidance on including the
needs of Travellers in the Assessment and Strategy required by
the 2002 Homelessness Act and in Local Plans and that they will
not be approved without them..
8.1 Lord Avebury has listed how many Authorities
have failed to carry out the requirement to include Travellers
in their Homelessness Assessments and Strategies and it is difficult
to understand why the ODPM refuses to enforce them.
8.2 The 1968 Act did not work because the
Secretary of State seldom enforced the duty to provide enough
camp sites. Now the same thing is happening with the guidance.
Lewes has for many years refused to provide any sanitation on
its Transit site, despite the guidance that it should. The "welfare"
checks before evictions seldom include the details of school age
children and evictions are seldom delayed to allow several weeks
at school.
9. The guidance on unauthorised sites given
to LAs and the Police by the D of E in 1894 and the 1998 DETR
Good Practice Guide and the ODPM Draft Guide (and the High Court's
1995 Wealden Judgement) require the Police as well as LAs to delay
evictions so medical appointments can be kept, to delay evictions
each side of childbirth, and for other health problems and, most
ignored of all, to allow school age children several weeks, preferably
until the next half term or school holiday.
10.1 These needs of schoolchildren are widely
ignored, both by the Local Authorities, the Police and the Magistrates
and County Courts.
New Travellers often prefer to educate their children
themselves but because of evictions Gypsies are often illiterate
or semiliterate so they cannot do this. This is the main reason
they give for wanting a permanent camp site with a tenancy which
would allow them to travel mainly during the school holidays.
10.2 If a permanent site is not available
the guidance should be made mandatory that school children should
be tolerated for say a minimum of four weeks and be provided when
they leave with illustrated work sheets to work on and a phone
number for obtaining more.
10.3 The Planning Law that Gypsies who want
a permanent site for educational or health or other reasons should
not count as Gypsies, should be amended. One reason Gypsies wish
to live in caravans is because they would feel "lonesome
in flats or houses as this would separate them from their extended
family" and force the disabled or elderly into "homes".
The Housing Act says families should not be split.
11. The ODPM in the Draft Guidance says
that toleration should only be granted for a certain period of
time, such as until a medical problem is diagnosed and a course
of medical treatment is started. This needs to be changed to comply
with the earlier guidance that toleration should last for as long
as the need, whether it be months or years. Otherwise great harm
or even death can be caused to those with permanent health problems
like angina or heart problems, or disability or old age.
12. Several Councils have evicted Travellers
with these problems. One Council evicted a small Romany family
from an empty field owned by the Council, although they were told
the father had a bad heart. They refused to believe this, although
he could have shown them medicines to prove it. The result of
the eviction was that he had another more severe attack and was
permanently disabled. This is just one example of Councils closing
their eyes to inconvenient facts.
13. Statistically Gypsies are far more likely
to be refused Planning Permission for a camp site than for a house,
but the refusal is often reversed on appeal. It would be unjust
to change the present system by which Travellers can live on the
land with hard standing, water and sanitation while waiting for
the Appeal.
14. Lord Avebury in the Lords on November
3 said that it was unfortunate that Magistrates Courts are not
allowed (by Stones Justices' Manual) to consider Welfare issues,
like ill health and schooling, before granting the Council a Section
78 eviction order under the 1994 Act. This turns the Court into
a rubber stamp and seems to contradict the Human Rights Act and
even the 1994 Act itself as it states that "illness"
is a defence against eviction. The refusal of Legal Aid for Section
78 adds to the problem. Some County Courts also say only the High
Court can stop the eviction. This is why the guidance to tolerate
is so widely ignored.
15. It is a pity the 1994 Act applies to
six vehicles not six caravans.
16. The Draft Guidance asked for suggestions
on these welfare criteria.
I would suggest that although the Midwife completes
her statutory duties when a baby is six weeks old, the period
of toleration should be extended by a few weeks until the baby
has had its first inoculations around eight weeks.
Some Midwives say no evictions should take place
in the last three months of pregnancy, but if that is impossible,
it should be the last four weeks not the last week or two as babies
often arrive two weeks early.
They are sometimes evicted daily even from Council
land, through no fault of their own by using Section 61 of the
1994 Act with no court hearing and when the police with dubious
legality form a convoy which prevents them stopping anywhere until
they are over the County Boundary.
17. It is discriminatory that Part 7 of
the 1996 Housing Act requires Councils to provide Housing for
Homeless People with children or poor health, but does not require
them to provide a far cheaper camp site for Travellers, so forcing
them to live on an unauthorised site where they may be evicted
every few days, often without a court order.
18. The Government guidance on Travellers is
widely disregarded and is only of use to the few Travellers who
are able to get to the High Court. This applies both to the Guidance
that Local Plans and Homelessness Assessments and Strategies should
include the needs of Travellers as well as guidance on welfare
issues that evictions should be delayed for several weeks if there
are school age children, preferably to the next school holiday,
that eviction should be delayed before and for six weeks after
childbirth, for medical and dental appointments and for ill health.
19. In one extended family the children
asked their parents, "Why can we only go to school sometimes
and the other children can go to school all the time?" Their
parents told the Magistrates that, "It was like Christmas
Day for them going to school". The Magistrates had told the
parents to get the children into school and come back to court
two days later to see if the Magistrates would give the Council
the Section 78 of the 1994 Act to move the family on. Two days
later the Legal Adviser to the Magistrates, told them that, according
to Stone's Justices Manual Magistrates were not allowed to consider
"welfare" issues like health or schooling as these could
only be considered by Judicial Review in the High Court. The Manual
cites the Dunne Case as the Authority for this, but that was a
highly unusual case.
20. Also The Human Rights Act surely should
require all Courts and all Councils to weigh up the "proportionality"
of each eviction. That is the amount of harm caused by evicting
each group of Travellers against the alleged harm of not evicting
them, and instead tolerating them or, as in Norfolk, directing
them to a more suitable site.
21. If the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public
Order Act protected from eviction those with less than eight caravans
or sleeping vehicles, it would at least allow a nuclear family
to remain together. Instead, however, the cars which tow the caravans
are counted and the 1994 Act only allows less than six vehicles.
This can mean only two caravans. With separate caravans for parents
and older boys and girls many nuclear families are too large.
Numbers do matter. The furore at Cottenham is because of the huge
number of 800 Travellers who have settled there. It would be unjust
however if the huge numbers there led to the proposal to prevent
all Travellers camping on their own land in reasonable numbers
while they appeal the refusal of Planning Permission, however
small the numbers. Those with less than 20-25 caravans might be
considered reasonable, depending on the size of the plot.
22. Norfolk County Council persuaded smaller
local Councils in Norfolk to try to avoid forcible evictions by
creating a number of places where Travellers could
A serious problem with some unauthorised sites
is that one family with only five to 20 caravans may not be causing
any problems, especially if the Council is providing facilities
(portaloos, rubbish collection and if possible a water tap.)
If , however, the site is visible from the road
and has any space on it, other Travellers sometimes settle on
it, and overcrowding, litter and bad behaviour can be the result.
Too often nothing is done to stop this until
the situation is so bad that all the Travellers are evicted, which
is unjust to the ones who did keep the rules.
This can be prevented in various ways, by asking
the first caravans to agree to having locked height or width barriers
so only cars can enter and at once removing any caravans that
break in either by using Section 61 or 77/78 of the 1994 Act.
1994 Act. In one case on 11 September 2003,
the Legal Adviser to the Justices told them that Stone's Justices
Manual did not allow them to consider welfare issues as the Manual
said that the Dunne case had established that only the High Court
can do this by Judicial Review. This turns the Justices into rubber
stamps and contradicts the actual wording of the 1994 Act that
"illness" is a defence. Also the Dunne case referred
to a most unique case where a Magistrate sent the High Court an
argument in affidavit form (like a judicial review application)
on a point not raised by either party.
Lord Avebury said of this family in the Lords
on 3 November 2003 that it was regrettable that the Justices could
not consider this family's circumstances and that no "Legal
Aid" was allowed them as the rules say that no "Legal
Aid" shall be granted for Section 77/78.
(c) by the Council asking the County Court
for Possession.
(d) by Parish Councils claiming that they
do not need to do welfare checks or go to Court. One Parish Clerk
said that Solicitors told her that she did need to do welfare
checks but she had not done them. Another said it did not need
to.
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