Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Written Evidence


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.





 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2004
Prepared 8 November 2004