Planning permission to include 3 traveller pitches…

[MrsALS]

If you were living close by (circa 0.5 miles) to a new build development that included 3 permanent traveller pitches would you be worried?
Local planning has just been approved.
On one hand 0.5 miles isn’t on our doorstep, 3 pitches isn’t huge, and I’m guessing a permanent site as part of a wider new development is better than a temporary, illegal site. But on the other hand I can’t help but be nervous, particularly the impact on resale value.
Can I have opinions please?

Its not near a football stadium by any chance is it? We have just had one approved

We have a large travelling community in our town. Mostly no trouble, it's mainly the younger ones tbh. I know quite a lot of the families and have worked with a lot of them, I would have no issues.

There is huge prejudice against travellers, & there are good reasons for it.
Being worried about affecting the sale value is secondary to managing to sell at all.

Its absolutely racism and most unjust - we tend to remember the Nazi atrocities to the Jews and count that as racism, but not the 500,000 or so Romani people who were exterminated in the same way.

I grew up on a hop farm, every September there would be field after field of caravans as the Gypsies & Irish Travellers arrived for 2 weeks of picking, it was all very good natured and some of the hardest working people you could meet.

There would be the odd dust up outside the pub and horse buggy racing down the main lane.

At the end of the two weeks we gathered all the scrap from around the farm and piled it up for them to take as a bonus, and off they all went to the next gig.

This was late 90's, sadly, shortly after cheap European labour was employed by many farmers, pricing the UK travellers out of the market forcing many to stay put.

Why?

Shouldn't people be entitled to have somewhere to live?

People don't want travellers to travel anymore, but they all also don't want them living anywhere.

Are you making a generalised statement that an entire ethnic group of people are all engaging in antisocial behaviour? And you're calling other people ignorant...

No, you're jumping to that assumption because you're hurt that I pointed out that you're ignorant. Calm down and read my comment again and you'll see I didn't make a generalised statement that an entire ethnic group of people are all engaging in antisocial behaviour.

You weren't even responding to me. I don't understand who's side you're on now but want to point out that it is racist. Gypsies are a race of people.

We have a permanent traveller site with 10 spaces near us. Maybe 1.5 miles away, but I cycle past most days on my way to work.

There is never any trouble. They are just people living their lives. They seem to live there pretty much permanently, their caravans have decks and everything attached, they are plumbed in for water and sewage. They keep their place nice and tidy, kids go to school. I would live next door no problem.

We do however have trouble when people set up in car parks and on playing fields where there are no proper toilet facilities or litter collections and people can't park or use the football pitches, the grass gets all churned up.

But a planned small site with the right facilities wouldn't bother me at all.

Apologies for replying to the wrong person but you were still in the wrong.
I didn't say anything racist about gypsies. I didn't mention gypsies. I think you're so eager to take offence that you're taking huge leaps.

I've obviously completely misunderstood your post, apologies.

I hope you can see why I'm so defensive.

We're discussing Travellers, not Gypsies.
We had both in my previous village, they are very different.

This is so true. It’s easy to be PC about it when you haven’t experienced the consequences first hand

I wouldn't be bothered being that distance away and only a few pitches, there's probably plenty more smaller sites that you may not know about too.
However travellers do unfortunately have a reputation and from personal experience I have seen underhand and illegal behaviours many times from travellers first hand.
It may be the odd few but doesn't help their reputation, just like a few Brits drinking themselves to oblivion on holiday doesn't help the general impression of Brits abroad!

Are you aware that both are lumped in together by society? So you actually don't know which one it is. Someone somewhere decided to use traveller as an "umbrella" term for two entirely different groups. It's a huge source of frustration.

We have 8 travellers pitches near us, they own farm land next to it, it’s right on M25 so not where most people would want to be. You wouldn’t know they were there, apart from dogs barking when you go past and the occasional dog escaping.

Why aren’t the British public marching for the oppressed Traveller? …. Like they do for other groups?

One common definition of hate speech is “any form of expression through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color, sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability or national origin.”

This thread is inciting hatred, hidden behind wide-eyed ‘I’m only asking a question’. Sadly MumsnetHQ want this ‘debate’ to continue. Horrible.

www.gypsy-traveller.org/advice-section/report-racism-and-discrimination/

I think people are just giving their opinions based on their experiences. Some have had no issues and others have.

Opinion is still discrimination when expressed on a public forum…

I am very glad that you had such a positive experience, but it was nearly 30 years ago in an industry that no longer exists. Unfortunately my personal experience is that there has been diversification from hop picking to theft of tools, farm equipment, quad bikes and cabling. I'm pretty negative as a result.

The only racism that's still openly OK in modern British society......

I don’t think it is about racism. My parents had a group of New Age travellers illegally pitch up on the recreation ground close to their house. The locals’ complaints were nothing to do with race, I think they were all from some form of white British or European background. Likewise I have friends who live on canal boats - the legal way, paying for fixed moorings and utility facilities and being a part of the river community. They have constant problems with so called “river pirates” - boaters who travel around, pitch up illegally and damage the riverbank, don’t want to pay for trash disposal or sewerage or heating fuel so dump their rubbish and toilet waste in the river, and steal wood and coal from settled pitches. That’s not about race, that’s about itinerant and semi-itinerant people who choose to live around the margins of society, choose not to mix much outside their own community, and see themselves and their culture as a step apart from the settled community, lacking respect for the people and land within the settled community and not seeing its laws or mores as applying to them. Most people don’t care what racial group they belong to, they just care when it’s at odds with the laws which guide the way of life the rest of us are expected to conform to.

I wouldn't buy anywhere near. This will devalue your home OP.