Gypsies and Travellers and Local Communities
Debate between Julian Knight and James Heappey
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
That did not happen in my constituency, where we had the farce of people parking in the car park and receiving fines—these were legal motorists—which I then had to get overturned by the council. That again emphasises that there is one rule for one and another rule for another.
James Heappey
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Indeed, that was exactly what happened when we had the very first occupation in Burnham-on-Sea. Traffic wardens were giving tickets to those who had parked legally but overrun, while the Travellers were allowed to be there without penalty. We are talking about the main tourist car park for what is—I can say this now that my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) has left the Chamber—Somerset’s premier seaside resort. The presence of an illegal encampment in that car park—especially one right next door to the coach park, which is an important part of our town’s business—creates entirely the wrong first impression, may well lose us business and certainly costs local businesses nearby, and that is without mentioning the clean-up costs that the local council incurs as well.
In the nearby village of Berrow, there was a Traveller encampment on the village green. Given the mess that the green was left in afterwards, Berrow chose as a village to spend quite a large proportion of its annual precept on building a bund all the way around the green. I question whether money that is hard earned by parish councils should be spent on preventing illegal activity rather than on more positive improvements for the community altogether.
I should also mention that there have routinely been encampments on private land up in Brean, a popular tourism destination, which means that businesses that contribute enormously to our local economy are left holding the baby and are responsible for bringing in the bailiffs and moving those Travellers on. Additionally, Somerset County Council has told me that in the last three years it has spent nearly £25,000 on moving Travellers on from the public highway and a further £6,000 on the clean-up costs afterwards. At every turn, there is an asymmetric cost—a cost to councils, Avon and Somerset police, local businesses and the community, but no cost whatsoever to the Travellers who have made the illegal encampment.
The argument is that illegal encampments are an issue only if there is inadequate provision of authorised sites, but there are 64 authorised pitches in Somerset. In Bath and North East Somerset and in North Somerset, the two adjoining local authorities, there are a further 50, so there are 114 pitches available in the county of Somerset. How many can the taxpayer be expected to provide? We live in a beautiful part of the world, with a good local economy, but surely our liability for Travellers cannot be unlimited or set simply by Traveller demand. We must be willing to say what is a fair provision for councils to offer. We must reduce costs to local authorities or find a way to pass them on to the Travellers who are illegally encamped.
We must ensure that the process is quicker, so that we end this cat-and-mouse game, whereby the Travellers understand exactly how long they can stay, stay for exactly that long and then move on before they incur any cost, while the council has incurred all the cost in the process. The Irish option, which a number of colleagues have discussed this evening, is well worth looking at. We must ensure that the rules are fair for both the travelling and the settled communities. There can no longer be one law for the Travellers and another for everyone else.