80. There are 320 official local authority caravan sites provided explicitly for Gypsies and Travellers. Most sites cater for residential use, few offer pitches for short-stays or transit use. Most Gypsy and Traveller families live in owner-occupied caravans or mobile homes. Well-designed sites will offer spaces for two caravans on each pitch. A lot of families will have a mobile home or chalet which will be left permanently on site and also a touring caravan. Pitches are rented under licence from the site provider.[73]

81. We were told that a range of accommodation is required for Gypsies and Travellers. The Traveller Reform Coalition believes that Gypsies and Travellers should be "able to choose from a broad range of accommodation types according to ownership, price and location".[74] The National Association of Gypsy and Traveller Officers agrees: "Travellers should have the same access to a range of accommodation as is expected in settled communities".[75] Charles Smith, Chair of the Gypsy Council for Education, Culture, Welfare and Civil Rights told us:

"We are asking for equality with people in housing. There is private site provision; registered social landlords, proper ones; local authorities; possibly a mixture of the two; and other forms - just the same as housing. So you can rent, you can buy, the same as other people have: you can live in a flat, you can live here, you can live there, you can choose. Once we have the open market on sites, the same as housing, the problem is dealt with."[76]

Although many Gypsies and Travellers spend long periods of time in one place, others still travel for all or part of the year. This means that both permanent residential sites and temporary sites are needed, as the National Association of Gypsy and Traveller Officers explain in their submission:

"Gypsy families themselves also exhibit a need for a nomadic way of life, and travel often for economic purposes and to meet family and relatives. This travel pattern has often caused problems regarding unauthorised stopping places and the lack of available areas to stop. Interaction between Gypsy families and the settled community provides potential problems wherever Gypsy families stop, and the requirement to address both permanent accommodation (howsoever provided) and transitory accommodation to enable stopping places to be legally acceptable and defuse the problems associated with unauthorised camping is self evident."[77]

82. There are five main types of accommodation:

Short-stay sites:

• Emergency/Temporary Stopping Places
• Transit Sites

Long-stay sites:

• Public Residential Sites
• Private Sites; and
• Permanent Housing

In her report Pat Niner highlighted that around 79% of sites studied catered for a single group of Gypsy/Traveller. 71% of sites were occupied by English Gypsies, 7% by Irish Travellers and 1% of sites were occupied exclusively by New (Age) Travellers. Only 21% of sites had residents from more than one of these groups. English Gypsies were the most widely catered for, living on 92% of sites with Irish Travellers residing on 28%, and New (Age) Travellers on 3%.[78] Many people believe that different groups rarely mix successfully on sites, and one Gypsy told us that incompatibility stretched into families:

"I think the majority of Gypsies in this country would much prefer to live on their own site given the problems we have with incompatibility, where half of us cannot live together. That does not mean English and Irish; that means family to family. That is one of our biggest problems."[79]

Short-term stay sites

83. Those Gypsies and Travellers who travel are not well provided for. There are just over 300 transit pitches provided on local authority sites. The National Association of Gypsy and Traveller officers argues that:

"Unauthorised camping can easily be eliminated by the provision of authorised stopping places to reduce discrimination by private campsites refusing to take Gypsy families. If legislation required local authorities to provide temporary or short-stay accommodation the travelling community would then be able to travel to predetermined stopping places thus avoiding the present situation of families arriving in an area with no accommodation and being forced to move on at short notice. Once again, the provision of temporary or short-stay sites would require a needs assessment based on local travel patterns within a county or region. A network of such sites could then be established with a regional overview. Without Government directives compelling local authorities to comply, many local authorities are unable to follow a planned development of Gypsy accommodation due to the consultation processes on planning legislation."[80]

84. The need for transit accommodation has been recognised for over forty years, but supply is actually shrinking. This is because many authorities have found short stay sites difficult and expensive to manage and maintain. Gypsies we spoke to on an unauthorised encampment in Hampshire seemed reluctant to consider using short-stay public sites. Such sites had reputations for being in a poor physical condition, or for attracting trouble-makers.

85. The ODPM Gypsy Sites Refurbishment Grant has over the past few years tried to encourage local authorities in England to develop transit and stopping place sites through provision of 100% grants for development of new sites. It was hoped that through enhanced provision, the number of unauthorised developments could be reduced. However the Traveller Law Reform Coalition believe this has created a new problem as emphasis shifts away from residential provision, and short-stay sites become clogged up with Gypsies and Travellers waiting for spaces on residential sites:

"More transit sites are needed, but the lack of residential sites will tend to distort their usage, as Gypsies and Travellers will want long term stopping. There have been few successful examples of transit sites because of this, and because of the failure of local authorities to maintain them."[81]

Other submissions have also highlighted this trend. Charles Smith of the Gypsy Council for Education, Culture, Welfare and Civil Rights believes that local authorities are now only interested in building transit sites:

"Local authorities seem only interested in providing transit sites which while necessary for some movement, do not and cannot replace the need for stable properly built long term residential sites."[82]

NAGTO stress that:

"Local authorities require assurances that when providing transit and temporary accommodation they are not being asked to meet national shortages of accommodation on permanent sites by the provision of temporary sites which may be used for extended periods. The establishment of transit sites should also be subject to assurances that the local authority area will not be subject to increased unauthorised encampment sue to the availability of transitory information"[83]

The Association for Chief Police officers share NAGTO's concern that this pattern of short-stay accommodation provision may increase unauthorised encampments:

"Many transit sites have ceased to be "transit" and have become permanent sites for one family or one family group. Quite frequently a site will attract other Travellers to set up camp on unauthorised sites nearby. This contributes to the "not in my back yard" attitude of members of local communities."[84]

86. As legal sites, transit sites should have amenities and services including boundary fencing, hardstanding on each pitch, water supply, toilet and washing facilities, waste disposal and electricity supply.[85] Stopping places are less formal and less well-serviced with perhaps only a water supply and rubbish disposal facility. They are generally intended for shorter stays. We received submissions which were critical of transit sites which lacked facilities.[86] There were concerns that poorly equipped sites contributed to the poorer health, higher infant mortality, higher maternal death rate and lower life expectancy in the Gypsy and Traveller community than the norm in the settled community.[87] It is for health reasons that the Gypsy Council (Romani Kris) argue that individual self-contained toilet and handbasin facilities should be provided on both transit and stopping place sites. They suggest that 'portaloo' style facilities would also offer the advantage of easy removal when pitches were not in use. We observed the successful use of such facilities on our visit to South Dublin in Ireland. The Gypsy Council argue that sites without such facilities will have a limited lifespan because they will quickly become health hazards.

87. Transit sites have a reputation for being difficult to manage because it is harder to control access, behaviour and length of stay. Dr Robert Home told us:

"The official statistics show that authorities with transit provision have a lower incidence of unauthorised encampment, but the sites can be difficult to manage. The reasons include: high turnover, non-payment of rent, vandalism of facilities, anti-social behaviour, complaints from neighbouring land users, conflict between different occupiers, and difficulty in enforcing maximum length of stay."[88]

There seems to be some consensus that transit sites must be well equipped with the regular presence of a manager on site, not a cheap option for a local authority:

"What we need is just a few transit sites up and down, I don't want to live in one place all the time, but you have to have a strong boss on a site to run it and who knows who gets on with who."[89]

88. A distinction is drawn between transit sites and stopping places related to the standard of provision and anticipated length of stay. Pat Niner comments that "Very generally it seems likely that the more elaborate the facilities provided, the tighter management must be provided, and the greater the risk of deterring the most troublesome unauthorised campers".[90] Stopping places, with provision of fewer amenities and services, are thought to require less management but there is much less consensus about their success. Such sites can be subject to more opposition from the settled community because of their informal nature and lack of local authority management. Arun District Council submitted West Sussex County Council's strategy on Gypsies and Travellers which revealed reluctance to provide short-stay sites:

"We have no experience of running transit sites and foresee difficulties in ensuring that they are used for the purpose intended, with families being required to move off after a defined period of stay, be it a week, a month or three months. We are also concerned about the difficulty of ensuring that sites provided to less than residential site standards do not cause nuisance to local residents and the possibility of claims being made to the local authorities. We concur with the ODPM's conclusion that 'transit site management is likely to be expensive and certainly not a cheap options for local authorities': our estimate is that transit sites are likely to cost a minimum of £300,000 each to develop, subject to size, location, facilities and the availability of services, and would cost about £30,000 p.a. to run. Nevertheless, it is the County Council's view that this option is to be preferred to minimal facility stopping places which are likely to be effectively unmanaged and unmanageable."[91]

89. Unfortunately there is no way of testing whether short-stay sites would help reduce the numbers of unauthorised campers. Such sites cannot be expected to work in isolation; they would have to be part of a network. One way to trial this idea might be to run a pilot scheme within a particular geographical area to attempt to develop a mini-network of sites.

90. NAGTO, who represent local authority site managers do not think short and long stay accommodation should be mixed:

"If they are permanent residential sites where people want to reside permanently that is not the same as transit or short­stay accommodation. When people settle on permanent sites and use that as their home, the last thing they want is people coming on there for a couple of weeks, living next door to them and then moving off. That is a permanent residential site. You also need a network of transit or short­stay sites."[92]

But other witnesses, such as Dr Home, suggest mixed provision on private sites could work well:

"Personally I think that a lot of gypsies would be quite happy, and do, to provide transit accommodation on their own sites, so you could do more in that area, but you would need planning permissions that define this and perhaps define periods of the year. Public authority transit site provision has been singularly unsuccessful. There is a handful of sites, but they always give rise to all sorts of problems. It may be that there is a place for a private solution to some of that."[93]

91. Charles Smith suggests that touring caravan sites could be encouraged to accept travelling Gypsies/Travellers on their sites:

"As it is, there are over 2,000 mobile homes on Parks, providing families with cheap housing. Generally, these Parks will not accept a Gypsy or Traveller family, however 'respectable' they are, so only non-Gypsy families can use that particular facility. This is racism and the Government should tackle it. The Caravan and Camping Club accepts Gypsy members and thereby lets them use its camping sites. The Caravan Club however currently does not accept Gypsy members (again racism the Government should tackle). It is worth noting that both these clubs have special dispensation under planning laws which allows them to have up to five caravans on their sites without the need for planning permission. Allowing Gypsy and Traveller people to use these sites could help to provide a breathing space as transit provision whilst transit and residential sites are built and more private sites are allowed." [94]

Long-term stay sites

92. Private sites play an important role in accommodation provision for Gypsies and Travellers. There are more than 650 owner-occupied sites providing more than 1,800 pitches (average 2.76 pitches/site) on a friends and family basis; and 90 private sites with 1,750 pitches available to rent (average 19.4 pitches/site). The great majority are owned by Gypsies/Travellers, and most are permanent long-stay sites. Many Gypsies and Travellers would like to develop their own sites for use by themselves and immediate family. However we received a large number of submissions highlighting the difficulties Gypsies and Travellers had encountered when trying to obtain planning permission for a private site. Many Gypsies are frustrated by the planning process, arguing that if they could develop their own site, they would free up pitches on local authority sites for those without the means to develop their own site.[95] We explore this in more depth in chapter seven.

93. For the vast majority of Gypsies and Travellers, private site ownership is only a dream. More realistic is a place on one of the 320 local authority sites in England, although there are waiting lists for these as Dr Kenrick told us:

"There are families who still want to get on to council sites. I would say that we could do with half as many council sites again as we have now, going by the waiting lists - particularly in the Home Counties, which is where I do most of my work, I must say. There is still scope for more council sites, and there are people who want to go on council sites still because they do not have the money to buy their own land."[96]

Pat Weale, Gypsy Services Manager for Worcestershire County Council, believes that some Gypsies and Travellers are paying excessive rents to private site owners because they have no other place to go. She argues that local authorities have a responsibility to provide sites:

"[…] there are more Gypsies and Travellers who cannot provide for themselves and they are the ones who are looking to the local authority to be a fair and equal landlord and not to be ripped off with private rents and private sites. I have noticed that on some of the sites that have been taken into the private sector the rents have risen from something like £35 to £80 to £100 a week. You are cherry­picking, you are forcing the average Gypsy back on to the roadside because they cannot afford those rents. So I am really concerned with those families who cannot provide for themselves and who are looking to us to accommodate them […]."[97]

Housing

94. There is very little information on Gypsies and Travellers who live in settled accommodation although it has been estimated that it may be up to 200 000 people.[98] It is estimated that many Gypsies and Travellers in Greater London live in settled accommodation.[99] The numbers seeking housing are likely to vary according to levels of alternative accommodation provision. While some Gypsies and Travellers choose housing as a permanent option, others see it as a temporary measure, particularly if they do not have a place on a site; have endured a series of evictions from unauthorised developments; or for educational or health reasons. Some Gypsies and Travellers hope to move permanently into housing but one report alleges that "Travellers frequently get offered housing that is on 'hard to let' or sink estates".[100] The report adds that "when Travellers do move into housing, harassment from some settled residents often ensues".[101] Others find the change too difficult. Several submissions have highlighted the lack of support networks to help Gypsies and Travellers adjust to housing: "There is a lack of any statutory support mechanisms to help and advise Travellers adjusting to living in houses and to protect these families from prejudice and discrimination."[102] Indeed, Pat Niner's research suggests many would return to travelling if a suitable and safe site was available.

95. For many Gypsies and Travellers, housing is not a culturally acceptable option as witnesses explained:

Dr Kenrick: "It is the four walls. Mobile homes are not cheap. It is the four walls which are thick and you do not feel you are in the country. I was asking people about this because sometimes a mobile home looks very much like my flat - apart from being mobile - in size and the way it is laid out with furniture and they say, "We don't like the four thick walls which cut ourselves out." Many gypsies will not visit their relations who live in houses for this reason, because they do not like going inside the door."[103]

Dr Home: "[…] there is a huge amount of anthropological work done on this. The cultural values among most of the hundreds that I have dealt with would confirm that. I have a large number who have tried housing and have come out of it, or they have bought a house just so they can keep a caravan in the back garden with a yard alongside and so on."[104]

Cliff Codona, Chair of the National Traveller's Action Group: "Could I please say I have something very desperate to tell this committee about the structure of the traveller and gypsy community. The reason that housing terrifies us so much is because we do not put any of our elderly into homes. We do not send any of our children off to boarding schools. We keep our family units together. We keep the oldest member of the community to the youngest member of the community within that family group. It is our very existence. To be put into housing is a deep threat to us, to have our children taken away from us, to be able to look after our elderly."[105]

Group Housing

96. An alternative form of accommodation provision has developed in Ireland. Group housing is described as residential housing development but with additional facilities and amenities specifically designed to accommodate extended families of the Irish Traveller community on a permanent basis.[106] Small groups of purpose-built bungalows or (less frequently) houses are built in small enclaves, which may or may not include a community house, play areas, stables and grazing and secure work areas depending on size of scheme, location and Traveller needs. The bungalows are built to permanent housing standards and are detached or semi-detached so as to allow in-curtilege space for lorries and other vehicles, perhaps including caravans. Properties are rented.

97. The appeal of this concept is that it preserves the sense of family, community and interdependence that is an important feature of life for many Travellers. Pat Niner's report records positive support for group housing schemes from many of the Gypsies and Travellers she interviewed. She suggests how the schemes could be adapted for trial in England:

"I think it could [be successfully implemented] for particular groups of Gypsies and Travellers who are relatively stable and relatively settled where there is a group who we know can live together peaceably and would continue to live together peaceably. One of the things that I think might be explored is, if there were land available, thinking about developing some sort of group housing adjacent or near to some of the established local authority sites where there are people who might be very happy to move into houses and then children or other residents of the site themselves could move on to the plots with the caravans as (I would not say a progression because that implies that we are trying to settle people which I do not think we are) meeting need. I do not see why that should not work but I think it has got to be sensitive and it certainly is not a panacea."[107]

One drawback of the system is that extended families settled in group housing will naturally grow apart over a number of generations through marriages and deaths, possibly inducing social friction and splits into the system as original loyalties diminish.[108] Cliff Codona, Chair of the National Travellers' Action Group, suggested that if one member of a scheme left it might be difficult to find an acceptable replacement:

"When you do a social housing project and you put the one family in it, all of a sudden - and this has already happened in Ireland - one of the family members decides to leave to go somewhere else, then the council authority is left with a surplus property but not necessarily another outside family is going to come and use that property, because they have the one family living there and there might be tensions within them two different families."[109]

98. We visited several group housing schemes in South Dublin County including those at Kiltipper/Marlfield, Kimmage Manor Way and Greenhills Grove. Mick Fagan of South Dublin County Council told us that Travellers were keen to secure places on group housing sites. He explained that negotiations between the council and Traveller advocacy groups were often protracted, and he was unable to develop group housing schemes as quickly as he would have liked. The planning process also took time and public consultations were often difficult. Settled communities near proposed sites had been very concerned about their development although the council had received few complaints once the sites were established. It was emphasised to us very strongly that to be successful, group housings schemes needed to be built at very small densities - 5 properties being the ideal. We were also told that residents were carefully selected to ensure they were compatible, most were from an extended family group.

99. Officials from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister also visited the Republic of Ireland and were impressed with the schemes they visited:

"Certainly the group housing that saw was really, really nice. It was a very good standard of accommodation. It basically allowed for an extended family to live together in a cul-de-sac. The accommodation was provided very much in consultation with Gypsies and Travellers. There was no feeling that Gypsies and Travellers were actually being forced into this sort of accommodation. We spoke to a number of Gypsies and Travellers who were living in the group homes, who were living on permanent sites and who had expressed a preference to move now into group houses and to Gypsies and Travellers living on tolerated sites who were waiting for the group houses to be built for them. The message that came across very clearly to us was that this is an appropriate accommodation provision providing it is what Gypsies and Travellers want. There is no use providing this sort of accommodation if it is not what Gypsies and Travellers want and the aspirations of Gypsies and Travellers vary."[110]

However there is a question over resources:

"It is a resource intensive initiative. The actual plot of the group house tends to be a larger plot than that found in social housing. I think the differences between here and Ireland are quite marked in land availability. Ireland is a much less densely populated country. It does have a luxury of land use that we do not have and I think that whilst group housing could be explored here it would be difficult to provide the same sorts of accommodation as the Irish were providing. If I could summarise, the units that we saw were detached bungalows in little cul-de-sacs and I would find it difficult to imagine that you would have the same luxury of provision for anybody accessing social housing here."[111]

South Dublin County have used planning legislation to oblige property developers to build group housing bungalows as part of the quota of affordable housing they are required to provide. These schemes are then mixed in with other affordable, social, and market priced housing. South Dublin County Councillors emphasised that there has to be a political will to develop such schemes. They told us that issues of land price and land availability can be solved with sufficient will. In South County Dublin every word was required to They also emphasised the need to spread accommodation schemes through every ward, regardless of land price, in order to show a political commitment.

Conclusions

100. A range of accommodation options should be available through private and local authority provision including stopping places, transit sites and permanent residential sites. A number of transit sites are needed close to the major motorway networks. We recommend that the Government work with local authorities and Gypsy and Traveller representatives to trial the feasibility, usefulness and manageability of a network of short-stay sites. These sites will require firm and visible management in order to ensure appropriate behaviour.

101. Group housing may also be appropriate in some areas of the country. We were impressed with the examples we visited in Ireland. We appreciate that in addition to the financial resource implications of such a scheme, there is a land availability issue which is perhaps less apparent in Ireland. However we recognise that with sufficient political will, land and resources could be found. We recommend that consideration be given to piloting comparable group housing schemes in some of the former industrial areas of England which have large areas of empty homes and/or brownfield land.

74   Ev 36 [Traveller Law Reform Coalition] Back

75   Ev 86 [National Association of Local Councils] Back

76   Q 57 [Charles Smith, The Gypsy Council for Education, Welfare, Culture and Civil Rights] Back

77   HC 63-III, Ev 78 [National Association of Gypsy and Traveller Officers]

 Back

78   Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Birmingham, The Provision and Condition of Local Authority Gypsy/Traveller Sites in England, 2002 , pg 27 Back

79   Q 94 [Hughie Smith, President of the Gypsy Council (Romani Kris)] Back

80   HC 63-III, Ev 80 [National Association of Gypsy and Traveller Officers] Back

81   Ev 36 [Traveller Law Reform Coalition] Back

82   HC 63-III, Ev 91 [The Gypsy Council for Education, Culture, Welfare and Civil Rights] Back

83   HC 63-III, Ev 82 [National Association of Gypsy and Traveller Officers] Back

84   HC 63-III, Ev 88 [Association of Chief Police Officers] Back

85   Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Birmingham, The Provision and Condition of Local Authority Gypsy/Traveller Sites in England, 2002, pg 41 Back

86   Ev 42 [Traveller Law Reform Coalition] Back

87   Ev 41 [Traveller Law Reform Coalition] Back

88   Ev 89 [Dr Robert Home] Back

89   GTS 45 (ii) (not printed) [Derbyshire Gypsy Liaison Group - quote from 'John', a Gypsy] Back

90   Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Birmingham, The Provision and Condition of Local Authority Gypsy/Traveller Sites in England, 2002, p46 Back

91   West Sussex County Council, A Strategy on Gypsies and Travellers in West Sussex, January 2003 Back

92   Q 257 [George Summers, Gypsy and Traveller Service Manager for Hampshire County Council and Secretary of the National Association of Gypsy and Traveller Liaison Officers] Back

93   Q 16 [Dr Robert Home] Back

94   HC 63-III, Ev 92, [The Gypsy Council for Education, Culture, Welfare and Civil Rights] Back

95   HC 63-iii, Ev 67, [Hughie Smith, President of the Gypsy Council (Romani Kris)] Back

96   Q 16 [Dr Donald Kenrick] Back

97   Q 234 [Pat Weale, Gypsy Services Manager for Worcestershire County Council] Back

98   HC Deb, 19 May 2004, col 1072 Back

99   Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Birmingham, The Provision and Condition of Local Authority Gypsy/Traveller Sites in England, 2002 , pg 9 Back

100   Dr Colm Power, Room to Roam, England's Irish Travellers, June 2004, pg 29 Back

101   Dr Colm Power, Room to Roam, England's Irish Travellers, June 2004, pg 29 Back

102   Dr Colm Power, Room to Roam, England's Irish Travellers, June 2004, pg 29 Back

103   Q 14 Back

104   Q 14 Back

105   Q 63 Back

106   Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Birmingham, The Provision and Condition of Local Authority Gypsy/Traveller Sites in England, 2002, pg 39 Back

107   Q 175 [Pat Niner, Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Birmingham and Gypsy and Traveller researcher] Back

108   Dr Colm Power, Room to Roam, England's Irish Travellers, June 2004, pg 30 Back

109   Q 65 [Cliff Codona, Chair, National Travellers' Action Group] Back

110   Q 368 [Dawn Eastmead, Head of Housing Management Division, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister] Back

111   Q369 [Dawn Eastmead, Head of Housing Management Division, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister] Back