New report from ITM slates Government Inaction

By Mike Doherty

Less than half of the Government’s claimed 620 new Gypsy and Traveller pitches are likely to be built by 2015, exacerbating the “dire shortage” of Gypsy and Traveller pitches and making “a future Dale Farm inevitable”, according to a new report by the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain.

In January the Homes and Communities Agency announced the successful bids for funds for new Gypsy and Traveller sites, announcing grants of £47m for 170 improved and 620 new pitches in a number of schemes across the country. Yet, according to information gathered from local planning departments and housing associations, less than 300 new pitches are likely to be built before 2015, when it is feared that funding will be withdrawn.

Responding to European Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg’s recent public call for more sites, Eric Pickles has emphasised the HCA funding as the answer to “a shortfall of appropriate sites.”

“We are providing 60 million in England up until 2015 to help local authorities provide new and refurbished Traveller sites in consultation with local communities,” said Eric Pickles. This, he continued, “would help reduce the number of unauthorised sites, which create tensions between Travellers and the settled community.”

 “Mr Pickles is either misinformed about the funding scheme, or is being disingenuous,” says Michael Hargreaves, a planning expert and the principal author of the ITMB report. “The mass eviction at Dale Farm in Essex was a direct result of the dire shortage of authorised pitches and created incredible tensions between the Traveller and settled communities. Yet the HCA funding programme – as it stands – can only make a future Dale Farm inevitable.”

According to the ITMB report, Essex, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Surrey, and Hertfordshire are the five counties with most Gypsies and Travellers, yet they have been awarded only 4% of the funding. This funding is for two schemes in Cambridgeshire and Kent and both of those are without designated sites or planning permission. The outlook in the rest of the South East is even direr, he says, with Essex, Surrey, Hertfordshire, and Hampshire – all local authorities with high Traveller populations – not applying for any funding at all.

 “Ministers have encouraged communities to think if they don’t want to accommodate Travellers, they don’t have to,” says Mr Hargreaves. “Yet our research shows that over 80% of those that have received funding for proposed schemes don’t have planning permission, which is notoriously difficult to push through in the face of local opposition. Some schemes don’t even have a designated site.”

Dale Farm: case study

Traveller campaign groups are concerned that another eviction may be about to occur less than 200 metres from the site of the original epic battle last year.

The international media may have moved on from Dale Farm, but many of the Travellers are still there, are still parked illegally, and are still embroiled in a legal wrangle with Basildon Council.

Perched on the side of the access road to the remaining legal part of Dale Farm is a row of caravans – home to those Irish Travellers who have not been able to move on after the eviction last October. Their temporary encampment is a stone’s throw from the muddy morass that is all that remains of the evicted unauthorised Dale Farm site. Most of the residents of these tiny caravans have bad health problems – some are very young and some are very old. Yet Tony Ball, leader of Basildon Council is adamant that they must go.

Basildon Council recently served notices to quit on the caravans on the road. At the time, Council Leader Tony Ball, said: “The occupiers of these caravans are breaking the law and I would urge them one last time to see sense and move away. If they do not we will be issuing the appropriate planning contravention notices and will take legal action if appropriate.”

“What happened here was terrible,” says Margaret Egan, who lives in one of the caravans on the access road. “The old ones and the young ones – it just tore their world apart. I am just a Traveller, so I all have is my common sense, but the money used to do this should have been given to help us rather than used to tear Dale Farm apart,” she says.

The residents also point out that Basildon council recently gave permission for The Dog’s Trust to build a dog re-housing unit with two houses for staff. This will be built on green-belt land near the site of the Dale Farm eviction.

“Everyone is sick here and we need somewhere to settle. We haven’t even got water or a toilet and Basildon are giving homes to dogs instead of human beings. I don’t think it’s fair,” says Nora Sheridan.