Laughing at the law: Travellers set up illegal camps while councils are closed

Published 01st Jun 2009

It's a Bank Holiday ritual - travellers swooping to build illegal camps while councils are shut. So when officials get back to work, do they lift a finger to help decent families whose lives have been ruined? What do you think?



When Verina and David Hyland moved their family into a converted barn, the plan was to get back to nature and enjoy their horses amid the beautiful Wiltshire countryside.

But six years ago that idyllic lifestyle was shattered - after a group of travellers set up camp virtually in their back garden. Since then, their lives have been made a misery.

Dead dogs have been hurled into their property; their teenage daughter, Holly, has been subjected to obscene abuse; and threats and violence have become an almost daily occurrence.

'Some of the men who we'll pass on the road will make shooting gestures with their fingers when they see me or my daughter,' said Verina, 57.

'One of them told me that I'd put him through six years of hell, and now it was my turn.

'In the pub, a traveller told someone we know: "The Hyland family will all be found dead in their living room." It's really chilling to hear that.'

Complaints to the police have fallen on deaf ears, and as for the local council and the other authorities responsible for enforcing planning law, their response beggars belief.

After five years of inquiries and appeals, the 16-pitch, three-acre site in Minety was granted legal status, with permission for the travellers to stay indefinitely.

The reason? Planning inspector Karen Ridge ruled that the site offered them access to health and education and provided a 'settled base' for their children.
Verina Hyland

So much for the travellers' professed desire for a nomadic lifestyle. And so much for the Hylands - whose £500,000 property is now virtually worthless.

As another neighbour, Mike McTernan, says, it is hard not to feel bitter.

'It really is one law for us and another for them,' he said. 'I blame the council because they didn't do much to find them alternative sites, and in the end, I don't think they had the stomach for a fight.'

Those words will come as no surprise to law-abiding homeowners up and down the country who find themselves confronted with the ever-growing problem of illegal traveller encampments.

In what is fast becoming a staple of the British Bank Holiday, last weekend it was the turn of Newent in the Forest of Dean to suffer a travellers' invasion.

Within hours, a beautiful field was transformed into a vast campsite on top of hardcore rubble, complete with sewerage, toilets and electricity.

Working throughout the night in what villagers described as 'a military operation', they cleared the land, installed septic tanks and fenced off the area for 12 mobile home pitches.

Travellers move in on Bank Holidays because local council enforcement officers are likely to be less than diligent.

Over Easter last year, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell experienced the phenomenon when the same thing happened near her country home in Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire.

Then on Good Friday of this year, travellers who had bought a three-acre field in Blackmore, Essex, moved in a gang of 60 men and laid 1,000 tons of hardcore.

But, as the Mail has discovered following yet another case last weekend, this time in Cricklade, near Swindon, the travellers might be unnecessarily sacrificing their holiday weekends - since they have little to fear from local government officers during normal working hours.

Residents in Cricklade had had their suspicions about a two-acre field on the edge of the 9th-century Saxon town, and were quick to summon a planning enforcement officer, armed with a 'Stop Notice', when they spotted the convoy of trucks on the Friday before the Spring Bank Holiday.

So did the travellers and their labourers down tools and comply with the legal order?

Of course not. Despite the notice being pinned to a fence post under the supervision of local police, work continued all weekend - the machinery supplied by the same Gloucester plant hire firm as in the Forest of Dean incident.
Tessa Jowell

So what is the point of such a notice if it is simply ignored? A spokesman for Wiltshire County Council explained: 'If a Stop Notice is breached, then we can mount a criminal prosecution.'

After their notices to prevent further work were so flagrantly breached, was a prosecution launched?

'I'll have to get back to you on that,' he said, later adding: 'We're in discussion with our lawyers about what our next step should be.'

In other words, a week after the travellers breached the stop notices, nothing had been done. Next time, they don't need to wait for a public holiday.

There are other common factors that run through these cases.

First, the travellers legally purchased their land (often using a third party so their plans remain secret).

Second, they submitted a hastily drafted planning application minutes before the council offices closed for the Bank Holiday weekend (it would be at least three days before council officials were back at their desks to deal with the application).

However incomplete that form, that single sheet of paper gets them 'in the system' and will be the travellers' passport to at least several years of residence in their new homes.

As case after case has shown around the country, from Crays Hill in Essex to Cottenham in Cambridgeshire, once the bureaucratic leviathan which is the planning system starts to move, it takes a long time to get anywhere.

The travellers might, of course, find themselves evicted after the seemingly endless roundabout of planning application, decision, appeal, amendment, decision and more appeals has exhausted itself, as has happened on some of the pitches at Crays Hill and Cottenham.

But as the Hylands discovered to their financial and emotional cost, there's no guarantee of that. If the residents of Newent and Cricklade want to see what the future may hold, they should look to Minety.

Verina Hyland, her 55-year-old electrical contractor husband David and their two children moved there 15 years ago.

The 25-acre property, surrounded by pasture, was perfect for their four horses.

In August 2003, the family took an extended holiday in South Africa, visiting family and friends.

'When we got home, we were rather shocked by the camp which had sprung up on our doorstep,' recalled Verina. 'The whole place had gone up in a matter of days on a Green Belt site - and it looked atrocious.'

Soon, the aesthetics of the camp - built on a site the travellers had bought for £80,000 - were the least of their concerns.

'It wasn't long before we were getting burglar alarms and CCTV fitted,' said Mrs Hyland.

The first inkling of their new neighbours' demeanour came soon after, when Mrs Hyland's daughter Holly, then 19, was verbally abused by a group of men across the hedge while riding on her own paddock.

'She came back in tears,' said her mother. 'They'd called out obscene comments about what they'd like to do to her - I couldn't believe it.'

The Hylands didn't call the police, hoping that it would prove to be a one-off. They were not so lucky. Over the next six years, they would suffer countless death threats and acts of vandalism.

'I can't describe what it's been like without getting upset,' said Mrs Hyland. 'We've had dead dogs thrown over the hedge on two occasions.

'One of them was a bull terrier type of breed which my husband said looked as if it had been mauled to death by another dog, so we wondered whether there had been organised dog fighting.

'Then, one winter morning, I went to the stable block and found someone had turned the water taps full on so the horses were all standing in freezing water half-way up their legs. One of them nearly died from hypothermia.

'Another time, someone removed the screws from the bottom half of the stable door so that it fell off the hinges and could have landed on one of the horses. Luckily, none was injured.

'One of our pubs has been pretty much taken over by the travellers.

There have been quite a few punch-ups. My husband was slapped twice around the head there on Sunday night by one of them.

'But when I call the police, I get a lecture from the community support officer who tells me the travellers have told her a different story and that I shouldn't antagonise them.

'We're not violent people - we just want to get on with our lives.'

She feels that the family's home, which should be worth around £500,000, is virtually unsaleable.

'You have to declare any problems you have with your neighbours, so who would want to buy this place?' she said. Fly-tipping has increased in the area, and at least one prosecution has been brought against a traveller.

Nigel Ponting lives in a cottage which backs directly onto the site. His back garden and the rear of his house are completely overlooked by the travellers, and when they arrived, he watched as a row of portable toilets were placed against his fence.

Mr Ponting showed the planning inspector the view from his house, which had once looked onto open countryside.

But he's reluctant to speak publicly, no doubt fearful of another stone through his window. A few months after the travellers' arrival, North Wiltshire District Council threw out their retrospective planning application amid concerns over environmental impact and proximity to local homes.

But they appealed, and after a four day public inquiry in February 2005, planning inspector Andrew Kirby overturned the decision - even though he accepted that one of the traveller patriarchs, John Lamb, had lied to him and tried to conceal the fact that he already owned a legal plot in Westbury-on-Severn, 40 miles away.

Mr Kirby ruled that it made little difference because even if he were to evict Mr Lamb, his extended family already occupied the Minety plot.

Later that year, the then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott stepped in and granted the families temporary permission to stay for 18 months.

In his ruling, Mr Prescott said he 'attaches significant weight to the personal needs' of the travellers.

Last year, planning inspector Karen Ridge granted them permission to stay indefinitely, because the site offered access to health and education and provided a 'settled base' for their children, despite travellers' professed desire for a nomadic lifestyle.

She said: 'Gipsies and travellers are believed to experience the worst health and education status of any disadvantaged group in England, and research confirms the link between the lack of good quality sites and poor health and education.

'A number of children from the site attend the local primary school and will undoubtedly have made friends within the community. They are no doubt benefiting from receiving continuity of education.'

She added: 'Some of the appellants have medical conditions, and a settled base will provide them with more certainty of health-care.'

Part of her decision was based on the fact that six suggested alternative sites had been judged unsuitable.

Unexpected visitors venture onto the Minety site at their peril. When I approached the motley collection of mobile homes, an unshaven man asked me my business.

'I advise you to f*** right off, now,' he said, adding: 'This is private property.'

And what news from the country redoubt of Minister Tessa Jowell? In December a planning inspector gave the new arrivals permission to stay for four years while the local authority tried to find suitable pitches.

That temporary stay could stretch into eternity. Another Bank Holiday building blitz has paid off.

As one of the travellers joked recently on one of their dedicated websites: 'If they gave gipsies the Olympic Village contract, we'd have it done in a weekend.'

True, but what a hideous eyesore it would doubtless be - and would they ever leave?

Source: ' Daily Mail '

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