(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . How Police Act forces Travellers to live by sewage works or risk arrest [1] [] Date: 2022-07 Bill Forrester is chair of the National Association of Gypsy and Traveller Officers – a network of local council workers who liaise with GRT communities about site provision and management. He told the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights in 2021 that new transit sites with decent facilities were needed, as the committee took evidence on the new trespass proposals. “You cannot just provide some tarmac and hardly any facilities to people,” he said. For some very basic sites, he added, the idea seems to be “to have somewhere to say ‘this is accommodation’, to be able to enforce the law against people stopping in that area”. At one transit site, in Smethwick in the West Midlands, the toilets and showers are housed in a shipping container. Capacity is advertised as 34 pitches, which Jones calculates could mean that up to 170 people are sharing these scant facilities at any one time. In fact, though, the site is barely used. There is no electricity; the site is covered in gravel, a tricky surface for vehicles, and unpleasant to live and play on; and the cost of staying is significant. Rent is £82.40 a week and the deposit is more than £250 for each caravan. A spokesperson for the local Sandwell Council said the site and facilities were “maintained and serviced to ensure they are in clean working order”, but acknowledged that the shower and toilet block was a modernised shipping container. They added that the site had a “fresh water supply” and hot showers. It’s a far cry from the open road and clean campsite with electricity hook-ups that most people expect on a camping or caravanning holiday. Analysis of transit sites: contaminated land, near hazards For this investigation, I mapped 242 of the authorised, permanent Travellers’ sites run by councils or housing associations in England. More than a third (36%) were within 50 metres of one or more of an A-road, motorway, railway line, refuse or recycling plant, sewage works, industrial estate, canal, river or sea. More than half (51%) were within 100 metres, 72% within 300 metres and 79% within 500 metres. Rover Way in Cardiff is an example of a particularly poorly located permanent site: it’s on the Cardiff Bay foreshore, near a sewage outflow, a sewage pumping station, a steelworks and a busy road. Official data for England’s transit sites is patchier and based on a two-day snapshot, so we cross-referenced the government’s official count with our own research and experts and identified 60 sites. Half (50%) were within 50 metres of one or more hazards, while two-thirds (67%) were within 100 metres. More than a quarter (28%) were within 100 metres of two or more hazards. Katharine Quarmby Most of these sites are supposed to be open by now, but not all are, with two still in the planning system – including one recommended for planning approval by Reading Council. It’s within around 100 metres of the local sewage station, next to a recycling centre that takes waste including asbestos, in a flood zone, and on the edge of the so-called ‘emergency planning zone’ around the atomic weapons establishment at Burghfield, within which housing is not allowed in case there is ever an explosion. A council spokesperson told us that Reading had assessed 80 possible sites before picking this one, and admitted that the “complexities of this proposed site are fully acknowledged”. A final decision has not yet been made. A further eight out of the 60 analysed are deemed open by local authorities and marked as such on the Caravan Count, but actually have no pitches available – a confusing situation for Travellers wishing to use them. Contaminated land is also an issue. A prospective site on a former army camp in Dorset has been approved despite concerns about asbestos and other contaminants. Existing sites – in Brighton and East Lindsey, Lincolnshire – are prone to flooding. A transit site in Telford and Wrekin has no electricity, is at risk of flooding and sits on uneven land, although it does have water and toilets. Another site in Warwickshire, formerly used for landfill and to store road chippings, was never lined properly and may contain “asbestos, heavy metals and possible contaminated water from unknown liquids”, according to a report from 2016. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/travellers-unsuitable-transit-sites-council-contaminated-land/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/