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four - The costs to others

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2022

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Summary

The TLRU survey did not extend to police forces, private landowners, businesses and Travelling People. Although the costs to these sectors are likely to be considerable, little attempt has been made by researchers to quantify them. However, some information from primary and secondary sources reviewed during the course of the research is available, and provides some idea of the nature and scale of costs that may sometimes be involved.

Travelling People

Some of the many financial and human costs to Travelling children and adults that follow have been identified by Travelling People themselves or their service providers, in conversation with a TLRU researcher (references are given for other sources).

Midway between the introduction of the site provision duty and its repeal, the government published The accommodation needs of long-distance and regional Travellers (DoE, 1982), a consultation paper. Included within this paper was the following comment made by a ‘long-distance’ Traveller:

We just go round and round like a game of dominoes and things are getting worse. Even getting onto a bit of land is difficult. We go round in a convoy and sometimes we get 10-15 of us on the bit of land and the Police come and stop the rest of us getting on. There's a lot of argument then and sometimes we all get on but it's bad if we don’t, as the others have to go on the roadside.

Then when we get onto the land the Police will be onto us. Sometimes they dig a trench all round with JCB diggers and say we can't get off unless we take our caravans with us. Well, we’re trapped then. Can't take out cars to get food even and we can't get out to work. Then they will come into our trailers and ask for receipts for all the stuff there. Might have to go 100 miles back to the shop to get a receipt for the television, for example, and what do you do about the Crown Derby you’ve been given for the wedding? And there was one morning at 6 o’clock when they had warrants to search for firearms and we were all out of the trailers standing in a row while they searched. Tore the carpet up as well.…

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Chapter
Information
At What Cost?
The Economics of Gypsy and Traveller Encampments
, pp. 51 - 66
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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