To tell the travellers...

[Starbuck999]

By my parents house to please fuck off?

Story is, my parents and their neighbours all clubbed together to buy a lovely piece of land that their terrace of houses over looks. None of them are rich and it was a large buy for them all but they all keep is beautifully and it is a lovely view for them all to enjoy, it's only a small patch of land, not what one could consider to be a field even. i think they have (had) plans to make it a play area for all the local children, or a sports field or something similar.

4 weeks ago, overnight, a few caravans appeared. Of course the residents went to speak to them to say it was private land (which they already knew as there are huge "private" signs all round it and they actually smashed down a large section of the fencing to drive their caravans in.) But the travellers refused to budge. They were very matter of fact and reasonably polite about the fact that they would not be moving and they knew the residents couldnt do anything to make them move right away. Lovely.

Now, whilst I fully appreciate anyone's right to live how they want, surely it should not be at the expense of others. It must be wonderful to live such a free life, moving from place to place if that is what you choose, but how can you not expect to pay? Caravans sites cost say £25 a night, they should be paying to stay in one, or buy their own land and live there.

The field is now horrendous. More and more caravans have been moved in, I'd say there's no about 20. There are huge piles of broken up crates, broken buggies, televisions etc and massive piles of general hosehold rubbish and food waste in black bags that have been split open by foxes I presume all round the edge of the land. It's starting to look like a landfill site!

I don't have the full details but basically the residents have been told nothing can be done to get rid of them right away, it will take time through the courts. Then they will be moved on. That's all that will happen. Now If I parked my car somewhere illegal it would be clamped, towed and I'd have a hefty fine - why doesn't the same apply?

AIBU?

Send a farmer in with a muckspreader filled with his finest aged manure. It's their land so they have an absolute right to fertilize it if they wish to, and I doubt the travellers will want their stuff coated in muck.

I suggest this because, when I was a little girl, a farmer in the village where we lived did exactly this to the travellers who set up camp in one of his fields. He started spreading at the other end of the field to the vans, to give them fair warning. They went and complained to the local police, who told them it was the farmer's land, and he had every right to spread manure if he wanted to - and the travellers moved out straight away.

Brilliant, SDTG! :o

Personally, I'd be delighted to do that if ANYONE encroached on my land without and wreaked havoc, not just travellers.

We have travellers in our town, and I think they add a lot to the local community. We have some that are in caravans and they have taken over an area of waste ground by the river. It is now lived in and has children's swings and a community. That is a great improvement. We also have lots that live in barges and travel up and down on the canal. They will often take over bits of land next to the canal to have gardens and sheds and fire pits to come back to. Again, I think that adds character. I think that travellers are traditional in this country and I want to see that tradition supported.

I hear a lot of bad tales from down South, and I do not want to dispute the experiences of those people. Of course people should not steal dogs, make a big mess and so on. But I don't think any of us really know the law and I would like someone who does know to clarify. I don't think they have more rights. Someone was saying they couldn't park a car/caravan on their neighbour's land as it would be illegal and the police would stop them. Well, I know that is not the case. My parents perfectly ordinary, non-travelling neighbours parked their car and caravan on my parent's garden and my parents did have to take them to court and it did take ages. People have land disputes all the time that have nothing to do with travellers.

I would like to know the law. You can't squat a house that is in use or is due for immediate occupation. Someone cannot move into my house while I am out shopping. Do similar things not apply to land? Can you really move 20 caravans on to land if a whole flock of sheep is lambing on them? If we are just talking about areas of land that are serving no specific function, I think that is rather a different matter.

Surely people are aware that if they buy houses that overlook functionless pieces of land, many problems are likely to happen with the future use of that land, and travellers are only one of those potential problems.

SMP, I agree that the issue is that more land needs to be legally available. But a massive part of the civil rights movement in the UK has been fighting the privatisation of the landscape. Large areas of the UK have become depopulated and their landscapes ruined by privatisation, and there are many clashes over land use rights still, of which the rights of travellers are only one tiny part.

There is a very great difference between owning a tiny garden, owning a field, and owning hundreds of acres. We are one of the most populated places in the whole world, and privatisation of land that then lies functionless is one of the great tragedies of the last 150 years.

Sorry to get off topic OP, and I do sympathy for your parents, but I think the law on this is part of a much wider issue.

yanbu.
having said this-theres good and bad in everyone-and travellers are actually human beings.
i agree that there should be more sites but a lot of times when theres talk of this-a lot of people are up in arms about it!
yep-cars and dogs are often stolen round my way aswell-but not by travellers.

SMP, I agree with what you have said, but I disagree that travellers have more rights.

You can either evict people through the courts or through private baliffs. That law is the same for everyone.

Nemofish "funny how we can think the Kray twins are wonderful old chaps"
Really? Do you know people who actually think that??

As I understand it (family member specialises in planning law relating to non-permanent housing, which includes travellers), major problems were caused in the 1980s by a change in the law related to the right to buy council housing. The plan was that rather than council sites being provided for travellers and Romany families, they would be asked to buy their own sites, and it was planned that the laws around planning permission and zoning would be tweaked to support this. However, the council owned sites were largely sold off, without the equivalent change in the law that would allow travellers to get planning permission to live on sites they owned. The result was that travellers could buy sites, but not get permission to put a caravan on it. (Which might have been the Government's plan, but we will assume it wasn't.) THence a lot of the problems now.

Can they arrange muck spreading? It's their land so their right. As long as they warn the travellers it's going to happen it should be totally legal.

Grendels - I don't think that law applied in Scotland, although I could be wrong. If it didn't (as I think) then it doesn't account for the problems that (a sizeable number of) travellers still cause north of the border. The problem is that the paperwork to evict takes so long to generate that by the time the local authorities have moved into action the travellers have moved on - but far from blaming the LAs, I choose to look to the people who have broken the law.

Kinders - if you want to know more about the case of the stolen dogs. The CCTV footage was from the Dartford Crossing going over to Essex.

Is that good enough for you?

forgot to say, the travellers also had their OWN car with them so that's how they were traced.

I would NEVER tar all people from ANY community with the same brush and I think a lot of people feel the same.

Sections 61 and 62 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 may apply.

At the moment trespass alone cannot be prosecuted as a criminal offence, but this is being debated.

Watch out for this trespassing, because repeated or prolonged trespass may create a situation of adverse possession (the right to be there may develop from just being there, to put it very clumsily). Have the Travellers been there before the land was bought by your parents and their co-owners? Was there ever a fence around the land before? The previous owners may have been victims of trespass too, and may have just put up with it. This is the sort of question that should have been asked before the land was bought. Travelers sometimes have an advantage over settled people in that they are aware of the little details of the history of the land that many blow-in residents in an area do not.

There is at least one company that I know of that can assist in evicting Travellers from private property. Google might help.

Travellers are a stubborn holdover from a different time, and so is a lot of the common law that applies to trespass, right of way, etc.

I personally don't see why they should be pathologised for being so different from settled people, or forced to abandon their traditional life or language. Yes, it is beyond frustrating, beyond annoying, and hard to understand why they would cling to their ways and impose upon others, with impunity. However, they are in some ways very like Native Americans who were similarly run over by a different culture that was operating with different values and at a faster pace than them. Imposing 'fixes' from above is counter-productive.

Here's an example from Ballybane, Galway, Ireland of the sort of collaborative process that can bring the best results when dealing with the housing needs of Travellers. Just saying 'Why don't they just [insert wishlist for the Travellers]...?' doesn't work.

Is anyone thinking "insert wishlist for the Travellers" should read "piss off"?

I think it's a bit offensive to Native Americans to compare them to travellers - or rather, the kind of travellers we're discussing here.

Is it not the case perhaps that we have simply got to the point where the Traveller lifestyle is not sustainable within the framework of how our country works? As someone mentioned much earlier, "common" land has gone, it's not coming back and parking illegally on private land (ie trespassing) should be treated in the same way as any other case of trespass would be. Asking councils to provide sufficient sites for all Travellers is not only unrealistic but inequitable. They don't provide housing for all settled people, only a proportion of then who are unable to provide their own housing. Surely the "good" Travellers that Kinders is defending can appreciate that they must pay their way, own their own land or rent it from farmers / landowners and treat it well (some kind of damage deposit as in rented housing perhaps?) If they are on the whole honest, law abiding and socially aware, it is hard to see what their objection could be. In the same way that our society rarely now sees housemaids, people of "private means" or even blacksmiths, some professions and ways of life simply do fall by the wayside or have to adapt. If they don't they cannot expect not to face criticism and hostility.

"I would NEVER tar all people from ANY community with the same brush and I think a lot of people feel the same."

Perhaps not intentionally Vulgar - but the Travellers in the OP haven't stolen anyone's dog. Yet you (among others) have repeatedly told us that the dog stealing thing goes on and is perpetrated by Travellers.

Strange to come on a thread commenting on one specific group of Travellers to tell us that Travellers steal dogs if you're not trying to imply that these Travellers will too. Why mention it otherwise? It certainly seems like you're tarring them all with the same brush.

Rubbish Kinders - all that has been done on this thread is that various experiences have been shared. I've shared my experiences of sites that I've seen that have been left in an awful state, with boundary fences knocked over by caravans and litter strewn everywhere. I'm sure that not all travellers do that, but many do. I'm sure that not all travellers steal dogs, but many do. Are you simply dismissing everyone's experiences?

YANBU, I feel so angry for your parents having their land ruined like that :(

I don't care if it makes me sounds prejudiced, I hate it when the travellers are around here. Last time they were here, there were dogs taken and killed, houses broken in into, two women who were victims of attempted rape and a child was nearly taken from a local superstore; when her mum realised she was missing, she alerted security who shut the doors. They found her in the toilets with some traveller women who were changing her clothes and cutting off her hair. A friend of my brothers was chased after with a knife, and the local farm and playgrounds were wrecked. Not to mention the amount of damage and rubbish they left.

I hate the fact they think they are above the law, and the law have to tiptoe around them unless they are accused of being prejudiced. They deserve to be punished like anyone else breaking the law.

OMG SirBoob - that is awful. Sadly though it's a reality for many communities. You ask any police officer or council official if they relish the travellers arriving on their patch, and I bet the vast majority will say no.

OP you have my sympathy. "Travelling communities" are almost inevitably utter scum with no respect for the law or the community they inflict themselves upon.

I've seen the intelligence data first hand, every time a "community" sets up the level of low level disorder and crime creeps up in the local area with the "travellers" site as the epicentre. It's like one of those bad movies showing some deadly infection spreading. Theft and vandalism skyrocket (and as someone else has pointed out, dogs and horses are particularly popular), local disorder goes through the roof. These sites also tend to have a huge problem with unlicensed firearms.

Unfortunately due to a variety of factors our (i.e. the Police) hands are tied in what we can do. Political sensibilities and the risk of significant disorder also prevent us from accessing these sites. The law around trespass is actually quite complicated and as its fundamentally a civil rather than criminal issue the mechanics of removing one of these sites is quite a long winded process.

You'll get rid of them eventually - probably as long as it takes for cogs of local bureaucracy to start turning. However you'll almost certainly end up with an utterly destroyed area of land and no recompense.

I may be generalising and perpetuating a stereotype but to be frank their behaviour warrants it.

'Also, don't turn the field into a play area. It's a hassle.'

Not really! We turned a field into a playground ten years ago and run it as a charity. Yes, you need to do it properly but it is one of the most rewarding things I have ever done in my life. There is a national network of playing fields associations who will advise you for nearly free (you pay a small amount, fifteen pounds a year, in our case).

I hope these travellers move on, soon, OP.