Priest urges council to find site for Dale Farm Travelers

Families without mains electricity or water forced to camp in sea of mud

The parish priest of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Wickford in Essex, has questioned what the £7 million spent on police and council costs had achieved at the Dale Farm Travellers site in Essex where dozens of families were evicted last summer.

Father Dan Mason said: “The Travellers are not happy seeing that land dug up and losing their homes. The residents are not happy, given that the site was supposed to be restored as green belt but it now looks like something out of the First World War. And the council are not happy. We could have predicted this.”

The Dale Farm site looks set for another confrontation over the next month with Basildon Council now serving eviction notices on a number of the Travellers' caravans which remain on the permanent site adjacent to the cleared illegal site. There are also a number of vans on the access road running up to the site.

Most of the Travellers moved into the lane at the time of the eviction, because there was nowhere else for them to go.

Fr Mason has called on the council to provide an alternative site for the Travellers. “The planning inspector said that Basildon needs to provide more pitches. You cannot just remove people without providing more pitches,” he said.

This pattern has also been followed at another Travellers' site in Basildon, known as Hovefields, where clearance has not resulted in restoration of the greenbelt but a site for fly tippers.

Adjudicating on a case at the Hovefields site, Planning Inspector James Ellis said that although Basildon has now stated it will have a Gypsy and Traveller Development plan in place within three or four years, it was unlikely on present reckoning that any new pitches would be built before 2017.

Failure to adopt a policy of site provision for what is a recognised ethnic group could amount to discrimination, he says in his report.

Mr Ellis said he was guided by Fordham Research issued in 2009 which projects that by 2013 there will be a need for 148 pitches. Currently there is a requirement to provide 62 pitches.

Fr Mason also expressed concerns about the risk the Dale Farm site now poses to children. “Children could go over there and fall in the holes and it would be difficult to get them out” he said.

Fr Mason, said his parish is supporting the Traveller families as best they can but he said they was grave concern over the health of the families, safety of the children and lack of sanitation.

Kate Berger, a supporter of the Travellers, noted that the caravans parked in the lanes are very cold places to live in at this time of year, because they no longer have mains electricity. She told ICN many family members have colds and respiratory illnesses. "They are surrounded by mud" she said. "This is no place to bring up children. When they were on the site they had all mains facilities and were well organised." At the same time, in spite of the mud and the cold, the caravans are shining and clean inside, she said. "The Travellers like to keep their homes in good shape."


Editor's comment: While many Travellers are facing real difficulties this winter, a new Channel Four series: 'Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier' begins this week in which they claim to enter the 'secretive and mysterious world of the Gypsys.

The Irish Travellers are a very distinct ethnic group from the Romany Gypsys - a fact which the producers of this programme seem to have failed to understand. These programmes focus on Travellers' weddings and parties, and completely ignore the very great problems facing these people. Some of the billboard adverts for the series are offensive also - showing young children with the slogan: 'Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier.' Would they use similar images of children from a different ethnic group I wonder.

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