‘A toxic silo’ – Herts Council Gypsy and Traveller Services team embroiled in controversy
“One of the wardens came round a week ago, and he credited our electricity meters with £100, saying it was from the government,” says Maggie*, a Hertfordshire County Council Traveller site tenant. “It’s a joke, £100 wouldn’t last a week. It went in five days and we were all out on one of those, yet still we used electricity with no one here. All that government money is gone already. The electric bills here are a joke, they are unbelievable, always so expensive, I’ve never had a normal bill. Yes, we have the cost-of-living crisis with the rising prices and that, but the electric bills here are unbelievable and it’s always been like this before the cost-of-living crisis.”
A Hertfordshire County Council Gypsy and Traveller services team, known by local Travellers as ‘the gypsy section’, that manages 10 permanent local authority-owned Traveller sites, is embroiled in controversy amid claims that it has become a “toxic silo”, divorced from the wider operations of the council, and is failing to investigate the absurdly high electricity bills its Traveller site tenants have to pay directly to the council.
“I have complained to the gypsy section wardens loads of times about my electric bill, nothing ever gets done, they just fob you off,” said Jane, a County Council Traveller site tenant.
In this investigation, the Travellers’ Times has spoken to a wide range of sources, including several of the Traveller site tenants who live on a number of the 10 permanent Traveller sites owned by Hertfordshire County Council. The tenants have all requested that we keep their contributions anonymous as they say that trust has broken down between all the 220 Traveller households living on the 10 sites, and the council’s gypsy section ‘wardens’ (as they are known by the Travellers), and they fear that they and their families will be ‘forced off’ if they are identified as whistle-blowers to the Travellers’ Times. Traveller tenant first names have been changed and their surnames withheld in accordance with their wishes*. As well as tenants, the Travellers’ Times also spoke to other sources, including charity workers with knowledge of the County Council’s Traveller sites, all of whom spoke on conditions of anonymity for their own reasons. The Travellers’ Times has also approached Hertfordshire County Council with questions and for comment.
“I live alone (with one dependent). I cook one meal a day, one small wash a week, my tumble dryer is broken, I use hardly any electric, my central heating runs on oil, yet still I am paying at least £15 a day just for a few lights, the kettle and the TV. Everyone on my site is suffering from the high bills,” said Sarah, a County Council Traveller site tenant.
Herts Council’s Traveller site residents, who pay council tax and rent to the council for their pitches in the same way all other council tenants do that live in bricks and mortar housing, do not have a direct relationship with an energy company for their mains electric supply, and instead pay their electricity bills direct to the council. Instead, the council buys its electricity from the energy company Npower and then sells it on at what it currently claims is a “standard supply charge that equates to 24.15 pence per Kw/h,” which, adds the County Council, “may rise significantly in-line with electricity prices generally.” The current tariff has been in place since at least June 2022.
“It's simple, we want to be able to choose our own electric supply,” said Tina, a County Council Traveller site resident. “We can’t go on like this, with these electric bills. People can’t pay them, they are selling everything they own, old family valuables and jewellery, the kid’s bikes, and things like that, and they are still going into debt. God forbid but the strain of it all could drive some people to take their own lives.”
It may be useful for some of our readers at this point, for the Travellers’ Times to explain how electricity usage is calculated and charged. KwhKw/h, or Kilowatt per hour, also known as ‘one unit’, is a standard measurement used energy suppliers, electricity meter providers and consumer advice organisations. All our electric usage estimates in the following article are taken from The Centre for Sustainable Energy, a well-respected source which is independent from both councils and energy suppliers. The Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) is a national charity supporting people and organisations across the UK to tackle the climate emergency and end the suffering caused by cold homes. According to the CSE, an average washing machine of 2.1 Kw, for example, will use 2.1 Kw/h if it is run for one hour. This would mean that an hour’s wash on this machine should cost a Herts Traveller site resident around 50p (2.1 Kw x 24.15 pence council charge for 1 Kw/h = 50.7 pence). It is also important to note that none of the Hertfordshire County Council Traveller site resident we spoke to – on a number of sites, had a mains gas supply. Every single resident we spoke to also paid privately for liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and/or had a heating oil tank which they paid the supplier for direct. None of the tenants we spoke to solely relied on electricity for heating, all relied on LPG or gas. Some of the plots had ‘kitchen and washroom’ outhouses (known by the Travellers as sheds) with ancient electric heater fans, the tenants that we spoke to who had these no longer used them. They told us that their neighbours no longer used them either, in a desperate bid to bring their absurdly high electric bills down.
“When I complained to the gypsy section wardens about my electric bills, before I could even explain, they just said ‘oh it’s the fan heaters in your shed that’s causing that,” said Chantelle, a County Council Traveller site tenant. “The wardens didn’t let me finish what I was saying. I had cut the wires to those fan heaters ages ago so they couldn’t be used by anyone. The bills were nothing to do with the fan heaters. The shed is now full of mould, we can’t wash in there or take a shower. Its freezing and dull of mould. In (the last two weeks) I have paid £210 into the electricity app. Where is it all going? Something is not right.”
Hertfordshire County Council are, according to recent Freedom of Information requests by the charity Friends, Families and Travellers, one of the just under a third of councils in the south east of England that manage and own Traveller sites and who still purchase electricity from an energy provider and then sell it on to their tenants. The other two-thirds of councils that allow their tenants to choose their own energy supplier and to have a direct commercial relationship with them as a customer. The advantages of a direct supply is that the tenants can shop around for the best deals, can complain to the energy provider if they think something is wrong with their bills, and if they have any rent or other arrears, it won’t be added to the same meter that also tots up their electric usage – which is what happens on the Hertfordshire County Council Travellers sites. Customers with a direct supply from an energy provider can also access the £400 government energy bill support scheme and also the many special energy bill grants from charities that support and represent especially vulnerable people, such as those with disabilities or long-term illnesses. Another just as important but less tangible benefit, is that by being allowed to choose their own energy supplier, Travellers on sites are in line with most of the wider population and have a feeling of autonomy and equality on this particular matter at least, that is denied to the Traveller council site tenants that do not have a direct supply – such as those living on the Hertfordshire County Council public Traveller sites.
“My children will probably not be able to live on a Traveller site, they are all full and they are not building anymore,” said Donna, a county council Traveller site tenant. “The authorities all want us to move into housing, but I ask you this: If my children ever move into a house, are they going to be able to pay their bills or choose an energy supplier and get the best deal? Or complain to their supplier if things go wrong? I can’t teach them all that – I don’t know how to do that myself. They will be prey for every scammer out there. The council treat us like we are children. We want to choose our own electric supply, and pay our bills like everyone else.”
In 2020 every single Traveller site household signed a petition addressed to the county council which, among other things, asked the council to investigate their high electric bills and to look at upgrading the electrical grids on its Traveller sites to allow their tenants to have a direct supply with an energy supplier which they could then choose themselves. The tenants we spoke to said the petition had been ignored and that the county council had not provided a response. The Travellers’ Times put this to the County Council and also asked them if they had ever assessed the possibility of switching the site tenants to a direct supply. The County Council did not directly address the petition and provided this response: “The County Council has up-graded the supply on one of its ten permanent sites but this was some time ago. Feasibility work has been undertaken on a site with a view to up-grading the electricity supply but the cost was considerable we would need to identify further funding to meet the cost of this before we could take this any further.”
However, with a charge claimed by Hertfordshire County Council, or tariff as it is also known, of 24.15 pence per Kw/h for its electricity, Traveller site tenants currently pay less for one Kw/h than most households who have a direct supply from an energy company, with most electricity tariffs currently capped by the government through the energy regulator Ofgem at a maximum of 34 pence per kwh. As for not being able to receive the government £400 support for energy, the tenants we spoke to confirmed that a senior warden’ had been visiting the sites and crediting resident’s electric meters with £100 and giving varying reasons as to why. None of the tenants have received any paper work or record of the credit and the reason why it had been given. When we approached the County Council it provided us with this comment: “Because residents on the County Council’s sites do not have a direct supply agreement with an electricity supplier, they are not able to benefit from a direct discount on their electricity bills. The County Council has taken the view that it will provide equivalent support regardless of this and credit residents’ meters monthly.” The Travellers’ Times has made preliminary checks and it appears that the “equivalent support” may have come to the County Council from a central government ‘levelling up’ ring-fenced fund set up to help councils to support vulnerable tenants and other local residents. The Travellers’ Times will be investigating this further as at the point of going to press with this article, we have not yet verified this. But what is crystal clear, is that what is happening to the County Council Traveller site tenants absurdly high electric bills is NOT a ‘cost of living and rising energy bills crisis’ story, after all they pay about 10 pence less per Kw/h than most households, there is something else going on to cause the high bills, which this Travellers’ Times investigation is seeking to uncover.
“People on my site are struggling,” says Maggie, a County Council Traveller site tenant. “Christmas is coming and they are frightened of even putting a string of fairy lights on a tree because of the electricity bills. We want the council to let us choose our own energy supplier rather than pay through them. I live alone with one dependent and I am paying £40-£50 a day for my electric and my central heating is on an oil-fired boiler and I pay separately for the oil. I have a sister living on a site in a nearby council and they have a direct supply with an electric supplier, she’s got five children, does several washes a week, has two washing machines, two tumble dryers, and her bills are nowhere near as high as mine.”
So, the Hertfordshire County Council’s Traveller site residents’ electric bills can’t be explained by rising electric prices, or by that they are using electric as their main source for heating or cooking (they are not), or that they are running three washing machines all day simultaneously, then what is causing them? The Travellers’ Times investigation team put this question to the county council, who replied: “Electricity use is affected by a wide range of factors including the number of appliances, lights, and other equipment used by residents.” In other words, the council is blaming the absurdly high electricity bills on the Travellers themselves, appearing to claim that a profligate use of electrical items by Travellers is the cause.
“Even in the summer, during the hot weather with the long days, we were still paying £15-£20 a week for electric,” says Millie, a County Council Traveller site resident. “We weren’t using hardly anything. Even if we go away, we come back and the meter balance has dropped. The meters are ridiculous, all over the place. I had to give up watching mine, trying to work out what is going on, it was causing me stress. I’ve lived on another council’s site and we paid through the council, yet the bills where never like they are here – nowhere near. It’s been going on since I moved here (a number of) years ago.”
It is important to note at this point, that we asked the tenants we spoke to for a detailed breakdown of their usage, and what kind of electrical items they had in their chalets and – if they had them – outhouses. We know for a fact that tenants have complained individually and collectively to the ‘gypsy section’ many times over the years about their absurdly high electric bills (after all it was one of the items on the 2020 petition, and that no action or response from the County Council that we or the tenants we spoke to can discern, has been taken. Instead, the tenants say that the stock response from the ‘gypsy section’ is similar to the response that we received from the wider council’s press office – that the Travellers’ are to blame for their profligate use of electrical appliances. Indeed, the Travellers’ Times is aware that some tenants say they have been accused by gypsy section wardens of running “cottage industries” from their chalets and trailers, such as commercial clothes washing services. Let’s clear that possibility up now and put it firmly to bed: A £20-£30 electric bill per day would, according to the electrical appliance Kw figures quoted by the CSE, require a bank of three average domestic 2.1 Kw washing machines running constantly, cycle after cycle after cycle, for a full 24-hour day. As domestic washing machines just aren’t built to take that kind of punishment, the bank would also need to include some spares – maybe another three to six washing machines - to ‘spread the load’. This is absurd of course, the tenants we spoke to had either one or two washing machines maximum (those who had two said that the other one was broken) and did one or two washes a week and tried to dry their clothes outside or inside their chalets and mobile homes on clothes horses and avoided using their tumble dryer - if they had one that worked.
“We got lots of power cuts, the electrics would just fail three or four times a week,” says Dianna, a county council Traveller site resident. “Eventually the wardens (redacted to hide identity – here Dianna describes what appears to the Travellers’ Times to be a bodge job by the wardens to reconnect her). “Now we still get power cuts about once a month, we have to be careful. If we have a shower at the same time as our neighbour, the power usually cuts.” The Travellers’ Times put this to the county council, who replied: “Electrical installations are checked by qualified persons but the increase in the size of mobile chalets over the years has meant the energy consumed has increased to the point when occasionally supply can be interrupted. We support residents’ by advising on energy use but outages do occur from time to time.”
So, what is causing the high bills? If its not the high usage of electrical appliances by the tenants, nor rising energy prices, then the Travellers’ Times can think of only two other reasons. One is electrical leakage, and yes, it is a thing, and in layman’s terms it means electric leaking into the ground. It can happen especially in old and degraded electrical grids, and the electric grids in most of the county councils Traveller sites are probably from the original build in the 1960’s to 70’s when most of the sites were created or taken over by the County Council. The symptoms of electrical leakage are abnormally high bills, power cuts (or ‘outages’), and sometimes electric ‘tingle shocks’ from appliances and door knobs etc. The county council’s Traveller site tenants may well be paying for electric that is leaking into the ground, or into the infrastructure of their chalets and mobile homes. The other possibility could be human error. The Travellers’ Times is not yet at a stage to fully assess this possibility, but the evidence we have so far certainly makes it worth a thought. As far as we can tell, the tenants mainly pay for their electric to the council through an app on their phone, and their current total is then displayed on a meter inside their house. The Traveller’s Times has heard of countless incidents of meters not updating, running out during the night and tenants having to phone gypsy section wardens who then credit their meter remotely, of council housing benefit arrears appearing on their meters even though they have paid the rent themselves out of their own pocket, of wardens being able to access their meters and credit them, and even of wardens being paid in cash by the tenants, who then pay that on to senior wardens who then credit the meters. The Travellers’ Times has yet to verify exactly how the tenant’s electric payments reaches the council and the council’s response has made us no wiser, but one would hope that the County Council has strict protocols and written process documents which could shed further light on this. Whatever is going on – it sounds complicated and prone to human error, particularly as the tenant’s payment apps and meters only display the amount of money paid in and the current financial balance. There is no other accountable paperwork, electronic or otherwise, that the tenants receive, no itemised monthly bills delineating rent arrears from electric usage and no accounting of the Kw/h usage or the tariff it is charged at.
Finally, we contacted a charity worker with knowledge of the county council Traveller sites who spoke to us on a condition of anonymity to protect their ongoing work. They confirmed that they were seeing an average daily bill in their case-work of £20 - £30, with some a lot higher. They also confirmed that dealing with the gypsy section was difficult. “The problem is that the gypsy section works in a silo separate from the rest of the county council,” they told us. They went on to say that this that has created a toxic culture within the team, and a failure to address the rapidly degrading electrical grids and other facilities in the Traveller sites, adding that the gypsy section has only had two managers in at least the past 25 years. The gypsy section was currently without a manager, they said, and was recruiting for a new one. They hoped that the post would not be filled by a promotion within the current team. “The structure and practices of Herts County Council has effectively placed the residents of the sites into segregation, and I feel it is unjust to place people into segregation and then blame them for not integrating,” they said.
We put this to the County Council who replied: “Our gypsy and traveller services’ team works closely with other internal departments and external partners. Its aim is to provide an effective landlord service and support residents by working with other agencies and professionals. Residents’ electricity is supplied via a payment meter and any concerns about the costs of this will be looked into on a case-by-case basis.” In response to the County Council’s response, the Travellers’ Times says that firstly, we have yet to speak to any tenant who has had their electric bills ‘looked into in a case-by-case basis’ in a way that has satisfied their concerns. Secondly the absurdly high electric bills are not affecting just individuals, they are affecting everyone who is a tenant. Whatever the problem is, its widespread and systemic and needs a site-by-site full accountable investigation with a paper trail of investigations and assessments etc, not some lip-service towards looking into it ‘case by case’. And it’s clear that trust has broken down, possibly irrevocably, between the council’s Traveller site tenants and the Hertfordshire County Council ‘gypsy and traveller’ services team. Whoever gets the new role as the ‘gypsy section boss’ – they will have a lot of work on their hands. The first thing they could do is make sure the ‘gypsy and traveller’ in ‘gypsy and traveller services team’ is given a capital G and T in their public communications, which the County Council failed to do when responding to our request for comment because, after-all we are talking about legally recognised ethnic minorities here.
Epilogue
“It was in the newspaper, the wall they got funding for was never built, and I will send you the link,” said Donna, a county council Traveller site resident. Donna sends the link to the Travellers’ Times and it’s a story from a reputable local newspaper and news website that was published in 2003. The story starts: ‘The (Holwell Traveller site), where 29 plots are rented out for travellers to park their caravans, will get an upgraded water supply system and new toilets at a cost of £390,630, as well as a sound insulation wall to protect them from the busy A414 Hertford to Hatfield road. Hertfordshire County Council, which owns and runs the site, has decided on the improvements after learning its bid for government cash to meet three-quarters of the cost had been successful.’ We put it to the County Council that the wall was never built. They stonewalled us in their reply and replied: “Any improvement works funded via government grant would have had to have been spent in accordance with the grant at the time.” We have since checked. There is and was never no wall. Just a few yards of weed choked mounds of earth and straggly bushes separating the dilapidated and run-down Holwell Traveller site, with its demoralised, marginalised, segregated and beaten-down tenants, from the busy, noisy and polluting traffic roaring past a few yards away on the A414 dual carriageway.
By Travellers' Times Investigations
(Picture: County Hall Hertford. By Robin Hall, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9192508)