A protest against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which has been slated for attacking Gypsy and Traveller rights (picture: Alamy)
A damning report has found that the UK is making traditional ways of life for Gypsy and Traveller communities almost impossible. Jo Richardson and John Perry consider what the findings mean and how social landlords should respond.
The rights of Gypsies and Travellers are supposed to be protected by equalities legislation, but in practice they are continuously under threat.
The parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee found that Gypsy and Traveller communities experience “the worst outcomes of any ethnic group across a huge range of areas, including education, health, employment, criminal justice and hate crime”.
In recent years, a raft of new legislation, including the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 in particular, has sought to further attack or limit the Gypsy and Traveller way of life. Two features of their lifestyles are especially vulnerable: their ability to move from place to place (nomadism) and living in caravans rather than in bricks-and-mortar housing.
The Good Law Project has commissioned a survey of the “legal landscape” for Gypsy and Traveller groups, asking whether it complies with the UK’s legal obligations. The opinion can be read here.
The lawyers’ conclusions are damning, stating that the UK government’s approach “places the UK in breach of obligations which it has undertaken as a matter of international law to facilitate the Gypsy and Traveller way of life and to refrain from discriminating against disabled people, the elderly or women”.
It says: “The practical effect of the combination of circumstances and law described in this opinion is such that they currently make this traditional way of life almost impossible to pursue.”
The report’s starting point is to remind us that nomadism and caravan-dwelling are protected rights under both UK human rights legislation and under the European Convention on Human Rights (which the UK still belongs to). The Equality Act 2010 recognises Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers as groups protected from unlawful discrimination.
However, legislation and court decisions have increasingly undermined those rights.
For example, planning policy “threatens to undermine the obligations of local authorities to provide public [caravan] sites”. It also restricts the ability of some groups to obtain planning permission to live on private sites, because of how they are defined in the guidance, according to research for the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Increasing numbers of injunctions are being granted by the courts to restrain unauthorised encampments. And, possibly worst of all, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 makes trespass potentially a criminal offence and creates a new offence of “trespass with intent to reside”.
The Good Law Project concludes that “a traditional nomadic way of life has been all but legislated out of existence”.
What can local authorities and social landlords do in response to this raft of legislation?
This legal opinion provides a clear basis for challenging actions which might be proposed that would limit Gypsy and Traveller rights, for example by showing how the public sector equality duty obliges authorities to facilitate their rights as a protected group.
But there are many positive steps that can be taken, too. All of the steps advocated in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and Chartered Institute of Housing’s (CIH) Managing and delivering Gypsy and Traveller sites report from 2016 are still very relevant.
Providing more sites is the key to resolving unauthorised encampments in an area, and there are some great examples of new site delivery and site regeneration in the social housing sector.
Another approach, particularly for Gypsies and Travellers travelling through an area where there is not a suitable transit site, is ‘negotiated stopping’ rather than eviction as a more resource-efficient and humane approach to accommodating families and reducing unauthorised encampments.
Councils with robust Gypsy and Traveller accommodation assessment data and open channels of communication with residents will also be more successful in managing and delivering new sites. The JRF and CIH report also showed that where existing sites are managed well, there can be less resistance to new site development.
As with the wider housing crisis, provision of affordable, appropriate spaces to live is the answer here. Legislating against the existence of one of Britain’s largest ethnic minority groups, who have been resident for centuries, is not the way forward. It isn’t necessarily easy, but it is possible to create the network of permanent transit sites that is so badly needed.
Capital investment from the government is necessary, and it was promising to see the £10m fund for sites announced by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities for 2022-23. It is anticipated that demand for the fund will far outweigh supply, but it is a start. Additionally, it should be remembered that where sites are managed well, the rent and charges to residents can cover the costs of management. It makes social and financial sense for the social housing sector to step into this space.
Several years ago, a group of social landlords (led by Rooftop Housing Group) and other stakeholders established a National Policy Advisory Panel on Gypsy and Traveller Housing. We meet regularly to share ideas and good practice on site management and delivery.
Recently, the panel has been supported by Friends, Families and Travellers and a grant from the Oak Foundation to explore issues around planning and site delivery. So, if you take a proactive approach to site provision, you won’t be alone.
Original post: Inside Housing.
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on