Travellers: Left by the wayside

[Ecovillage Network UK]

Left by the wayside

Public hostility and official indifference are forcing many Gypsies and 
Travellers to live in third world conditions. David Batty reports

Tuesday August 10, 2004

http://society.guardian.co.uk/socialexclusion/story/0,,1279953,00.html

Imagine you live on a foul-smelling, polluted wasteland with no 
electricity, no water and no sanitation. You have no access to family 
healthcare. You live in constant fear of being forced to move home in the 
face of racism.

This is the situation faced by those who belong to what the chairman of the 
Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), Trevor Phillips, recently described 
as "probably the single most intensely discriminated against" ethnic group 
in the UK - Gypsies and Travellers.

A series of court battles between local authorities and Gypsies and 
Travellers has highlighted the terrible conditions in which Britain's 
300,000 travelling people often live.

Last week, the high court ruled that a group of Gypsies could stay on a 
site they bought a year ago despite installing electricity cables, water 
pipes and septic tanks without planning permission from North Wiltshire 
district council. The judge, John Weeks QC, sitting at Bristol high court, 
said that to avoid suffering unnecessary hardship the 56 men, women and 
children could stay on the three-acre field in Minety, Wiltshire, until 
after a planning inquiry next February.

Over the past decade the number of such illegal encampments on land 
privately owned by Gypsies has risen sharply. There were almost 2,000 last 
year - up 40% from 2003.

Campaigners for travelling people blame this increase, and the bitter legal 
wrangles they provoke, on the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994), 
which removed the statutory duty on local councils to provide caravan sites.

There are now just 324 local authority sites where under 6,000 caravans are 
pitched. It was intended that the 1994 act would lead to the creation of 
more private sites. But government research shows that 90% of planning 
applications made by travelling communities are refused, so few new 
encampments have been created.

The result is more travelling people being forced to live in unsanitary, 
even dangerous, conditions on unauthorised sites, according to Sasha 
Barton, senior policy officer (gypsies and travellers) at the CRE.

She said: "The 1994 act had a massive impact on the availability and 
reduction in public sites. It was expected that more private sites would be 
set up but this didn't happen. This led to more unauthorised encampments 
that in turn lead to evictions and planning enforcement disputes.

"With no official address, travelling people cannot start up treatment, and 
have no transferable healthcare records. While they do access hospital 
accident and emergency departments they don't get preventive healthcare 
such as childhood immunisation. Often they only get care once they reach 
crisis point."

The CRE is lobbying the government to amend the housing bill to reintroduce 
a statutory duty on councils to meet the accommodation needs of Gypsies and 
Travellers. The move is backed by the Local Government Association, which 
is concerned about the spiralling costs of litigation on small rural councils.

Whatever the motivation, the move is backed by Luke Clements, director of 
the traveller law research unit at Cardiff University. He said: "All the 
legislation up to 1994 had been to integrate travellers and provide them 
with secure sites. Research shows that since the act there's been a 
significant decline in the number of sites and the condition they're in.

"New sites have not been built and existing sites have fallen into 
disrepair, which has led to more precarious lifestyles with travelling 
people forced to move from place to place and camp on poor sites."

Mr Clements, a solicitor and lecturer, said that due to public hostility 
and official indifference many official and unofficial sites are situated 
on roadsides, near sewage works or tips. "The most worrying aspect is the 
poor health of travelling children due to poor sanitation," he said.

"Only around half of the sites have clean water and there's a lot where you 
can see raw sewage in puddles. I've come back from sites with a sore throat 
for a week. They're effectively living in third world conditions. There's 
also a high accident rate among the children due to the poor conditions, 
especially those living next to busy roads."

One Traveller, called Mike, told SocietyGuardian.co.uk that a local council 
had refused to let them use the septic tanks despite several children 
falling ill. He said: "When we had the septic tanks cleaned the council got 
an injunction to stop us using them. We have no proper showers. We've only 
got running water because one of the local people who lives nearby has let 
us attach a water meter to her supply."

Margaret Greenfields, a trustee of the Travellers Aid Trust, said that the 
"appalling" conditions on unofficial sites were exacerbated by poor access 
to healthcare. "Unofficial sites, particularly those on the roadside may 
not get a regular postal delivery if at all," she said. "With the added 
problem of poor adult literacy, missed appointments are common."

She said that she knew of cases where people had been turned away from GP 
surgeries either due to negative stereotypes about the travelling community 
or pressure from local authorities to deny them treatment. She said some 
councils fear that if Travellers register with a doctor it will be harder 
to move them on or to deny them planning permission.

"High maternal death rates are a serious problem among travelling people," 
said Ms Greenfields. "But if you can't access a GP how can you access 
antenatal screening?" She said that there were a few isolated examples of 
good practice, such as the National Association of Health Workers with 
Travellers and a dedicated health visitor service. But she said health and 
social care staff needed more training to improve the quality of care 
provided to travelling communities.

"The main stereotype is you cannot work with them, they're going to be 
non-compliant," said Ms Greenfields. "There are high levels of ignorance 
and fear among care staff. A lot of it's based on fear. Social workers 
think they will get attacked by dogs. They're worried about large numbers 
of children wandering about, and think traveller people won't necessarily 
be honest about their situation.

"I remember one case where a travelling family asked for help from the 
local council for their daughter who was disturbed and kept running away. 
The local authority wouldn't help them. They said: 'She's a traveller - of 
course she'll run away'!"

Over the past four decades a series of small-scale studies has found that 
the health and life expectancy of travelling people may be substantially 
worse than that of the general population. Perhaps most worryingly, 
researchers have repeatedly identified extremely high levels of infant 
mortality and stillbirth.

Next month, the Department of Health (DoH) is due to publish a report on 
the health of adult Gypsies and Travellers. The research, led by Professor 
Glenys Parry at the University of Sheffield, should provide the first 
comprehensive national picture of the community's health needs.

Sasha Barton blames the current dearth of information on the failure of 
local officials to recognise Gypsies and Travellers as an ethnic group. 
"Some people are aware that Romany Gypsies are an ethnic group but not 
Irish Travellers," she said.

She hopes that the DoH research will provide health and social care 
agencies with the information to provide more appropriate support to 
Gypsies and Travellers.

"There are poor outcomes but no statistics that could provide the basis of 
policy," she said. "There's a lot more to be done but we hope that the DoH 
report marks the start of a more positive attitude towards meeting the 
needs of travelling people."

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