Leading human rights groups have criticised a government review of the laws surrounding unauthorised Gypsy and Traveller camps for reinforcing prejudice against nomadic communities.

Last week the housing minister, Dominic Raab, announced a consultation on the powers available to local authorities, the police and landowners to deal with Gypsies and Travellers who settle on land without permission. The announcement came following calls by MPs in October for increased eviction powers.



In a letter to Raab, organisations including Liberty, the Race Equality Foundation and the British Institute of Human Rights criticised the government for failing to focus on the root cause of the problem – the shortage of sites provided by local authorities for Gypsies and Travellers.

The letter’s signatories, which also include leading Gypsy and Traveller groups, expressed concern that the review and the questions chosen to guide the consultation process would “reinforce and further anti-Gypsyism sweeping across Europe”. They said increased eviction powers could worsen health and educational inequalities for Gypsies and Travellers, which are already among the worst for any group in the UK.

According to figures from July 2017, there are 1,524 caravans on unauthorised camps – a rise of 17% on the same month the previous year. In recent months, local newspapers across the country have run regular stories about groups of Travellers moving caravans on to playing fields or car parks, enraging locals.

A report in December by the charity Friends, Families and Travellers (FFT), which coordinated the letter, found there had been only a 2% increase in socially rented pitches between 2010 and 2017, which they said was not enough to accommodate the natural growth of nomadic communities in the UK. Concerns have been raised that many of the sites that do exist are overcrowded and unsafe.

Tensions between Travellers and nearby communities have come to the fore in recent weeks after the death of Henry Vincent, who was fatally stabbed during an altercation after he broke into the home of 78-year-old Richard Osborn-Brooks. The 37-year-old reportedly belonged to the Traveller community near Hither Green, south-east London. Flowers and cards laid in tribute to Vincent outside Osborn-Brooks’ house have been repeatedly torn down and replaced. One resident shouted: “These are scumbags, scumbags, scumbags. We’ve had enough in this country of scumbags,” as he demolished the shrine.

In a statement last week announcing his consultation, Raab said: “The vast majority of the travelling community are decent and law-abiding people. But we are particularly concerned about illegal Traveller encampments, and some of the antisocial behaviour they can give rise to. We must promote a tolerant society and make sure there are legal sites available for Travellers, but equally, the rule of law must be applied to everyone.”



Gypsy and Traveller bodies have argued that there is already enough legislation to tackle anti-social behaviour from any person, whether they are in the travelling or settled communities. Michelle Gavin, the projects manager at FFT, said the government announcement had chosen to focus on anti-social behaviour by a small number of people rather than “local authorities’ nationwide failure to identify land for Traveller sites”.

“The vast majority of Gypsies and Travellers who are living on unauthorised land are not doing this because they want to,” she said. “Would you want to live in a public space with next to no privacy? Would you want to get regularly evicted? Would you want to be the subject of press articles about ‘Traveller invasions’?”

She added: “It is a disgrace that in 2018, so many Gypsy and Traveller families cannot access a site to live on and therefore cannot access basic water and sanitation and often experience interrupted access to education and healthcare.”

Jim Davis, the manager of the equality and social unit at the Traveller Movement, said the language used in the announcement was “criminalising the vulnerable”. “Raab talks about illegal encampments and the undertone of that is that this is criminal activity,” he said. “It’s not a criminal activity. These people are homeless. If you had people sleeping in a doorway would you call them an illegal sleeper? Of course you wouldn’t.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Abiline McShane in her caravan in Birmingham. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

“If it was any other community, they would call this racist”

Abiline McShane, a 51-year-old Romany Gypsy living in Birmingham, used to make her living running a bouncy castle at fairs across the country during the summer, and selling rugs in winter. That changed in 2012 when her then-six-year-old daughter Leyla Grace fell from a 12ft landing on to a concrete floor and fractured her skull.

As Birmingham city council couldn’t provide her with a site to put her trailer on, she set up an unauthorised encampment close to a hospital to focus on getting treatment for her daughter’s brain injury. She was evicted from the site after a year and given a council house in the Yardley Wood area, with a drive to put her trailer on. “That’s not my home,” she says, sitting at the table in her caravan and pointing to the house. “This is my home.”

McShane expected to be in the house for only six months before finding a bay for her trailer in a council-run camp, but five years later she is still there. “We’re not asking for special treatment. They give people council houses. Why can’t they just give us a space on a camp? It’s cheaper to build a space on a camp than it is to build a council house.”

She was furious to read about the government consultation on unauthorised encampments. “If it was any other community then they would call this racist, but because it’s us, no one even bats an eyelid,” she says. She says has had abuse shouted at her and stones thrown at her windows, and that if more camps aren’t built, community tensions will only get worse.

McShane says her ancestors left India in the 1500s and that her family has been in the UK for hundreds of years. “We are the original migrants,” she says. “We’re still compromising our way of life by living on camps. If we had it our way, we’d be living by streams and under trees. But they won’t even give us the camps.”

• This article was amended on 16 April 2018 to correct “uninterrupted” to “interrupted” in a quote that was supplied to the Guardian.