Talking about Gypsies and Travellers

Michael Hargreaves,Irish Traveller Movement in Britain

Will cover

• The challenge to Big Fat Gypsy Wedding

• ITMB Research Findings• The local narrative – Chorley, South

Cambs & Basildon

Bigger, Fatter, Gypsier

The Advertising Standards Agency Review

• 372 initial complaints to ASA dismissed out of hand

• ITMB and Howe & Co lodged an appeal to the independent ASA adjudicator

• He asked ASA to undertake a formal review

Findings

• The campaign was irresponsible, endorsed prejudice against Gypsies and Travellers, was guilty of depicting a child in a sexualised way, and was likely to have caused mental & moral harm to children

• Central to the finding was the evidence of the impact on bullying, attacks on girls in schools

• The first time a regulatory body has recognised prejudice against Gypsies and Travellers

That was the posters

• Ofcom has now announced an investigation of the programmes as a whole

Planning for Gypsies & Travellers: The Impacts of Localism, June 11

• http://irishtraveller.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ITMB_Planning_for_Gypsies_and_Travellers11.pdf

• Responses from 100 councils in 3 regions• With RS abolition the 3 regions the targets they

recognised to fall from 2,919 to 1,395 – 52%• 40% of respondents expressed concerns about

increased local opposition to development for Travellers under a community based planning system

Planning for Gypsies & Travellers: The Impacts of Localism

• Communities believe they can expect to have proposals they oppose rejected

• Widespread delay & uncertainty among LPAs in progressing their development plans

• Reticence to go beyond defining criteria to identifying and allocating sites

Gypsy & Traveller Site Funding under the Coalition, March 2012

• http://irishtraveller.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/HCA-Site-Funding-Report-v.62.pdf

• £60m Traveller Pitch Fund - January 2012 £47m of grants

• 110 transit, replacement, Showpeople. So 510, not 620.

• No relationship between need & allocations. Parts of the Midlands, SW, Yorks, NE did reasonably well.

Gypsy & Traveller Site Funding under the Coalition

• Many areas unwilling to bid. Essex, Kent, Cambs, Surrey, Herts 25% of caravans, 4% of funds

• Unitaries 46% of new site funds• Housing Associations not interested• Too many extensions• Sites identified for less than half new

pitches, less than 20% have permission

Chorley 1

• Council consistently claimed no Travellers in Chorley

• Reflects sites provided after 1968 Act• But also lack of knowledge• Officers afraid to engage• No change with change of leadership• Residents paid for own barrister

Chorley 2

• 2 appeals, continued objection after CLG conceded 2nd inspectors report unsound, prosecution for non compliance, seeking an injunction

• Tenacity, fear of unsafe sites• Stress, health impacts

South Cambs 1• No town, 101 parish councils• Significant Gypsy & Traveller numbers, lots

of temporary permissions• Smithy Fen, Willingham, Fen Road • 2 public sites – all 29 pitches English Gypsies• Local plan work put aside – lost the

opportunity to include in major developments

South Cambs 2

• New needs assessment • Trying to reopen a 10 pitch site against

massive local opposition, so it can address local issues in Willingham & Smithy Fen

• OK to give 2nd & 3rd temporary permissions and move people around

Reopening Mettle Hill • Notorious travellers’site set to reopen. A

travellers’ site which was shut down when it became a hotbed of crime and vandalism is set to reopen

• Taxpayers to pay £3m for travellers’ sites• Coachloads of villagers oppose travellers’

site• MP: ‘Keep Traveller site shut’

Some Comments by Councillors

• Mervyn Loynes - I’d put a minefield around all of them

• Deborah Roberts – Travellers should be left to stew in raw sewage

• Would launch a suicide bomb on Smithy Fen, if she had cancer

And the Housing Portfolio Holder

• F*** off Gypos – Councillor Mark Howell

• Could the County put up some of these?

• A private joke between friends in the Independent group

Basildon • Too many Travellers• Have acted illegally• Rejected opportunity to solve – offer of

HCA land • Assumed they would disappear• Don’t deal with them as people, Traveller

liaison officers are enforcement. Compare local police

Ministers’ Messages?• Pickles pledges ‘to stop the caravans in their

tracks’ with new instant stop notices. ‘You know the story: in breach of planning law, travellers move in over a bank holiday weekend and it takes years for councils to remove them’

• £1.2m grant for the eviction• A widespread perception that the system is

unfair and that it is easier for one group to gain permission, particularly on sensitive Green Belt