Home is where the start is
Each night across Britain, an estimated 4,500 Gypsy and Traveller caravans must find somewhere to park in a land that has outlawed nomadic Gypsy and Traveller culture. From car parks to playing fields or roadside verges, tonight and every night thousands of Gypsies and Travellers will be breaking the law because they live in a country where it is legal to travel, but illegal to stop.
It’s been estimated that just one square mile of land would be enough to resolve this problem. Not a big deal in a land of 93,000 square miles, you’d think, but it’s a problem most local councils have been very keen to do nothing about. Central government says they should do more and have provided £32 million this year alone to help them do it. Yet each year the problem continues. Some local councils have been happy to get money to repair the council sites they’ve got, but most would rather do nothing at all rather than risk the anger of their local communities.
Just seven months ago the Home and Communities Agency (HCA) was set up as the single housing and regeneration delivery agency for England tasked with helping to create “great places and affordable homes.” They’ve also been given the task of ensuring that local councils start providing new sites for Gypsies and Travellers, by giving out Gypsy and Traveller Sites Grant.
Caroline Keightley is the woman at HCA responsible for helping to deliver those new pitches. She’s sitting with Robert Napier, the agency’s chairman at its London HQ near Victoria Station. She sums up the challenge as any Gypsy and Traveller would: “It’s a small job, but it’s a difficult one that must be achieved.” Napier agrees. Having toured roadside and council sites in Kent, he was shocked at the conditions that far too many Gypsies and Travellers are still forced to live in.
Unlike many who work in councils, government departments or agencies, Napier and Keightly aren’t just happy to make the right noises, they are also happy making commitments. The HCA is involved in a “single conversation” about housing and regeneration with local councils cross the country, and they say Gypsy and Traveller site provision is an important part of it.
“The significance of mainstreaming Gypsy and Traveller accommodation in the Single Conversation, is that it will ensure that local authorities can’t get away with not providing sites anymore,” says Keightly. Across the country, she and her colleagues have been ramming home the message that more new sites must be built to councils, housing associations and the Gypsy and Traveller community.
It’s been two weeks since the deadline for £32 million worth of Gypsy sites grant to be given out this year closed, and Keightly says the efforts are already bearing fruit. “In April, we expected only £23.1 million in bids. But through the hard work of our staff we’ve received bids of over £57 million – 50 bids showing a total of an extra 295 new pitches” says Keightly. The results of who will get money for new sites will be announced in the autumn.
The HCA is aware that getting new sites built is difficult, so for the first time the agency have set themselves a target of new pitches they are happy to live up to and be judged by. “Far from getting lost, new site provision is being pushed very strongly, “ says Keightly, “so there’s no hiding place for local councils. The single most significant thing is a new target of 550 new pitches over the next 2 years. These are new, not refurbished pitches,” she stresses.
550 pitches would give about a fifth of the Gypsies and Travellers who will be breaking the law tonight somewhere legal to stay. Not a solution to the problem, but for those with no home it will be a welcome start to some very unfinished business.
To find out more about the HCA and next year’s Gypsy Site Grants, see:
http://www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/32million_available_2009_10_Gypsy_Traveller_Sites