'Special treatment' claim as Travellers OK to stay - Essex

AN extended Traveller family has been allowed to set up home at High Easter – despite opposition from the parish council and residents.

Uttlesford District Council approved a retrospective planning application from Thomas Price and his relations, who moved onto land that he owns in September.

Their subsequent planning success follows claims of special treatment and a warning of tensions.

According to the Travellers’ agent, Cheshire-based Alison Heine, Mr Price has settled on the Twin Willows plot in Grange Road with wife Ashley and their two children, Ashley junior, 4, and Ambrose, 1.

Mr Price’s mother, Bridget, and her grandson Shane, 6, are also living there, along with a woman named Chantelle Price and her little boy, Jimmy Dean, 3.

In a statement to the council, Ms Heine said that the family were living in five touring vans with three small sheds and a portable loo, and were seeking consent for two mobile homes, a touring van and one or two touring caravans to be stored on site when they go travelling.

Mr Price earns money from carrying out tree work, landscaping, laying turf and fencing, which is topped up by income tax credit. His mother and Chantelle Price are on income support.

“The family have many other relatives in the Essex and south Cambs area,” said Ms Heine. “They have never lived on a socially provided site. They travel extensively for work in a circuit from Cardiff to Cambridge.

“Thomas Price bought the land [in High Easter] so that his mother would have somewhere to stop and because the family need to be settled to ensure the young children could attend school.”

Nursery places have been secured for young Ashley and Jimmy Dean. A school place is still being sought for Shane.

A survey in 2010 showed Uttlesford had one socially provided site for Gypsies with 17 pitches at Felsted. In January last year, a census identified 67 caravans across the district – including 25 at Felsted and 38 at private sites, including five at Little Hallingbury, where a site next to the M11 has temporary permission. Four caravans were counted on unauthorised sites not owned by Travellers.

Ms Heine argued: “Although Uttlesford is one of the largest districts in Essex, it has a very modest population of Gypsy Travellers living on site compared with the neighbouring authorities of Epping Forest and Chelmsford.”

She said that affordable, available sites were now in such short supply in more popular areas that families were forced to look further afield – to Uttlesford. Mr Price and his relations were “homeless”, she said, as a direct consequence of the shortage of suitable alternatives.

However, the parish council argued: “The development that has taken place on the site is neither appropriate nor has any demonstrable need to be in such a rural location.

“The parish council feels that many parishioners feel that current planning policy treats Traveller sites more favourably than it does other proposals and that it is easier for one group of people to gain planning permission, particularly in countryside locations. This inevitably leads to tensions within the settled community.”

In a letter of objection to the council, Bishops Green resident Matthew Giles pointed out that an application for a static caravan for an agricultural worker had been rejected. He said: “This illegal development has no place in our community.”