Pickles reaffirms the 'demonisation' of Gypsy and Traveller communities

From the Guardian

Communities secretary Eric Pickles chose the Conservative party conference on Monday to launch his latest policy to "stop caravans in their tracks". The announcement was Pickles response to last year's Dale Farm confrontation, where Basildon council completed decade-long proceedings to evict Travellers occupying pitches without planning consent. Never again, he promised, would local authorities have to spend a fortune in time and money enforcing planning law against the Traveller community.

There are approximately 5,000 council pitches and a further 8,500 privately owned pitches in England, so we do have legitimate places for our 13,500 travelling families. The only problem is that there are actually more than 18,000 caravans in use by the Gypsy and Traveller community – leaving a significant number of people with no legal right to set up home.

Planning applications for new sites are nearly always opposed, even by those living a long away from the land under consideration. Just the mention of a possibility of a new site in an area will often inspire a local petition and an action group.

Local press will give front page coverage to the campaign to stop this new development and resistance to this possible "damage" to the local community will be fuelled. Very rarely will the objectors have first hand knowledge of the community and many of their fears are fuelled by stereotypical assumptions. It sometimes feels as if Gypsies and Travellers are targets for prejudice in our country.

A frequently asked question is, why can't these people stay where they currently are? The reality for many is that they have no legal right to stay where they are, even if they actually own the land that their caravan is parked on. Families with children can be moved on by authorities, despite the problems it causes for families accessing health and education services.

The trouble with many apparently sound policy announcements are unintended consequences they cause. In this case, we risk the further demonisation of an ethnic minority based on centuries of cultural heritage, because their life choices appear at odds with the settled community.

The reality is that we do not have enough pitches for the number of Gypsy and Traveller families in this country, and we need to build more. Last January the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) announced funding for 600 new pitches across the country, leaving at least 3,500 families with no legitimate pitch in the foreseeable future.

Broadland Housing was a successful bidder for part of the HCA pot, and we are currently with our local authority partner to find a site for 12 pitches. The bid was based on the success of a site we built four years ago on the edge of Norwich, where eight families now live and take part in the local community. We have found these tenancies no more difficult to manage than any of the other properties we own nearby. Indeed it has been easier than we expected; the risk averse assumptions we made at the viability stage have proved wildly inappropriate and simply demonstrated the latent prejudices we had as a team at the start of this process.

Politicians need to be brave about meeting the needs of Travellers. We need legitimate sites, and powers to move families on should come only once we can be sure we have enough pitches for Gypsy and Traveller families, not before.