Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-04T15:37:28.421Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A - Further examples of concerns expressed by local authorities in relation to the costs of unauthorised encampments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2022

Get access

Summary

Britain's first official site for [newer] travellers is now open but there's a catch – it's the only one. Travellers warn that Brighton and Hove Council may have created a merry-go-round with only one stop as the site has a six-month maximum stay.… In the council's innovative draft document, Traveller Strategy, council leader Lynette Gwyn-Jones says, “A never-ending chain of evictions has cost our country vastly more in legal and other costs than a solution based in site-provision and temporary stopping places would have”. Gwyn-Jones’ election to leader is a marked shift from the policies of her predecessor, Labour peer Lord Bassam, who once remarked that travellers should be “driven out of town”. In the five year period from 1992-97 there were 300 evictions in East Sussex, 70 of them in Brighton and Hove. Nationally, the cost of evicting travellers has been estimated at £10-35 million every year. (Ansell, 1997, p 5)

The strategy document referred to also states that:

The mismatch of numbers of Travellers within the Sussex area and numbers of sites on which they can legally stay has inevitably led to high numbers of evictions. Throughout East Sussex alone there were an estimated 300 evictions in the five year period from 1992 to 1997 of which around 70 were in Brighton and Hove. Although no attempt has been made to quantify the legal and other costs associated with those evictions the costs of each one will vary from a few hundred pounds to several thousand representing a huge expenditure of resources on the process of chasing Travellers from one site to another. (Brighton and Hove Council, 1999, p 7)

The County of Avon was asked by a local Traveller support group in 1994 how much it had spent on unauthorised encampments; in correspondence it estimated that in 1993/94 the costs of facilities and evictions together had been £239,874. It also stated that:

… there will be a proportion of the time spent by Central Support Departments on travellers generally which is not broken down into further detail and therefore it is difficult to quantify. If you were to assume, for the sake of argument, that 50% of this was spent on evictions and related issues this would amount to a further £221,000.

Type
Chapter
Information
At What Cost?
The Economics of Gypsy and Traveller Encampments
, pp. 111 - 114
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×