Guide to Sites and Homelessness
Introduction to the issues:
Gypsies and Travellers have the same basic need for a safe and secure home as anyone else in our society. However, there are two major factors that distinguish Travellers from other communities. The first is that a Traveller’s home is not fixed in one place or made of bricks and mortar. Instead, it is a wagon, a caravan, a truck, a trailer or (in the old days) a tent. The second is that over a third of Travellers in the UK today have nowhere legal they can put their homes.
Being nomadic or being a Traveller doesn’t mean that you wander aimlessly about, but requires having places you can stop, whether for a short period of time (for example while carrying out seasonal work, traveling to fairs and festivals or visiting relatives) or as a permanent base where you can over-winter or from which your children can attend school.
Stopping places are called sites. Therefore, a ’site’ is a piece of land where a group of Travellers encamp for either short or long periods of time. There are two different types of sites, authorised and unauthorised.
An ‘authorised site’ means either a private or council run site that has been granted temporary or permanent planning permission.
An ‘unauthorised site’ means a site that has no planning permission, whether it is owned by the Travellers themselves, a private landowner or public land owned by the council, The Forestry Commission, The Highways Authority, etc…
‘Site provision’ means those pieces of land available around the country on which Travellers stop either temporarily or permanently.
Because the needs of Travellers differ from people who live in houses, it is not referred to as ‘housing needs’, but ‘accommodation provision.’
Travellers need the same range of accommodation provision that is available to everyone else in our society. In other words, they need to be able to access:
- long term and short term public and private rented accommodation,
- be able to provide for themselves by owning their own sites,
- be able to choose where in the country they want to live and move with the same ease as anyone else should they choose to,
- and be able to travel around the country and stop overnight on route, just like anyone else can who uses a holiday caravan park or a motorway service station hotel.
At the moment, this is not possible. Travellers can travel, but they can rarely stop without fear of persecution because of their lifestyle. There are inadequate numbers of pitches available on local authority sites and getting planning for private sites is extremely difficult.
Traditionally, Travellers were able to stop on commons and green verges, which are commonly know as ‘traditional stopping places.’ But most of these traditional stopping places have now been closed off through ditching, gating and bunding (creating large earth embankments). This forces Travellers onto less suitable pieces of land such as parks and playing fields and brings them into conflict with people in houses.
Unauthorised Encampments and Local Authority Site Provision
In the most recent government figures (July 04), 15009 caravans were counted by local authorities in England. Of those, 4232 (28%) were camped in an unauthorised manner. This would indicate that just over 25% of Travellers have nowhere legal to stop and consequently will be under threat of eviction. However, these figures are widely recognised as being inaccurate and are believed to be considerably lower with a more accurate figure being closer to a third of the community rather than a quarter. To read more about Government "Gypsy Counts", Click here.
There are currently just over 345 authorised council run sites in England, with 5068 pitches (Jan 2004). However, many authorised sites are facing partial or complete closure with a total reported loss of 234 pitches on local authority sites nationally between 1998-9 alone. Since the incorporation of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 , there is no longer any statutory duty on local authorities to provide sites. As a consequent, very few new sites are now being built to meet this drastic decline in provision.
Travellers and Housing
There are also a number of Travellers who live in conventional housing. However, most view housing as a last resort and a desperate measure brought about by the high levels of stress that are often experienced by members of this community. There are generally two categories of Traveller requesting to be housed and a number of reasons for this request.
The first category consists of those Travellers living on the road with no access to permanent pitches on authorised sites. This group includes both traditional and new Travellers. Very few Travellers from this category request housing and only tend to accept housing if they are suffering from extreme health problems/stress as a consequence of long periods of continuous eviction, harassment and physical attack.
In most cases, levels of ill health and extreme stress are allowed to build up to the point of physical and mental breakdown before the Traveller concerned will even consider the idea of moving into housing. Unfortunately, due to the difficulties faced once housed, mental and physical health rarely improves and cases of suicide have been reported due to severe depression following a move into housing.
Being physically attacked, being burn out or having bricks thrown or shotguns fired through windows of vehicles can often understandably result in the victims of these attacks moving very quickly into housing. However, once again, this does not always prove positive as once the local community is aware that Travellers have moved into housing in the area, harassment and victimisation usually follows on quickly.
The second category consists predominantly of traditional Travellers resident on authorised council run sites. We believe that numbers moving into housing from this group are considerably higher than from the first category.
There appear to be two main reasons that housing is requested by this group. The first is due to the severely inadequate numbers of pitches available nationally compounded by the fact that there is no provision whatsoever for exponential family growth. During the 1950’s and 60’s, due to changes in legislation, living on the road became increasingly difficult and many families moved on to authorised sites. However, due to a severe lack of adequate site provision nationally, once families secure pitches on authorised sites, they would often stay there permanently.
As a consequence, many traditional Travellers, born and brought up on the road, have now raised families on permanent authorised sites. Once the children of these families grow up, marry and wish to set up their own homes, they are more often than not forced to leave the authorised site they grew up on. Their choices are then to start living on the road (which many will never have done before) or move into housing.
This particular generation of Travellers face tremendous social and cultural difficulties as they are now being forced to leave their highly supportive and secure extended family groups and communities to face either the difficulties of life on the road or isolation, discrimination and victimisation by moving into housing.
The second reason that traditional Travellers on authorised sites request housing is as a result of the often appalling conditions on council run sites which can and do eventually lead to the threat of or actual site closure. This is typified by unacceptably poor levels of site management often in the form of severe disrepair to basic amenities resulting in serious breaches of health and safety standards. Due to the lack of any protection under Housing legislation for residents on council run sites, few residents are willing to challenge the council or site wardens about conditions as this often results in their license being terminated. Consequently, the options are once again to move back on to the road or move into housing.
Secondly, although this has not been fully researched as yet, there are clear indications that a large number of housed Travellers end up back on council sites or on the roadside within a relatively short period of time. As intimated above, this is due to either the difficulties of adjusting to settled or housed accommodation, isolation from extended family groups and supportive communities or harassment, discrimination and victimisation by the local housed community once they find out that Gypsies or Travellers have moved into the area.
This is compounded by the fact that there are no support mechanisms whatsoever (that we are aware of) to help families adjust to living in houses and to protect, mediate and represent families from the prejudice and discrimination that they face from the settled population. Unfortunately, in our experience, it is often the council officials themselves who aggravate the situation through ignorance, insensitivity to different cultural values and a clear lack of training in working with socially excluded minority groups.
Accommodation for Gypsies and Travellers must be both appropriate to their needs and as varied as that available to the settled population. The provision of council run sites alone is not the answer. Government and local authorities must work to provide and facilitate a range of site provision ranging from a national network of traditional stopping places and transit sites, to adequate numbers of good quality permanent private and public sites of a variety of sizes, management structures and locations.
Gypsy & Traveller sites provided by local authorities and RSLs in England - 18 January 2007 (Excel 367 Kb) Published May 2007, DCLG website.
Follow this link to download "Providing Gypsy & Traveller sites: contentious spaces" Published October 2007 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
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