Travellers can use council land... and not be evicted
A GROUP of travellers who have been moving around encampments in the Derbyshire Dales will now able to park on council land in the district without fear of being moved on.
Councillors rejected plans to offer seven temporary sites for the travellers in the district, including one in Ashbourne, triggering a serious legal issue for the authority.
The council has a legal duty to provide a site for two families to stay on, so halting plans for the seven designated traveller sites means the authority has nowhere to move them. This makes eviction from council land impossible.
Derbyshire Dales District Council debated long into the night at Wirksworth Leisure Centre last week on how to both protect the two traveller families and respect the interests of other residents.
The meeting saw councillors vote against giving the traveller families seven specific designated sites where they could stay for up to eight weeks at a time.
Council officers had put forward the seven temporary sites (where the families have previously stayed) in a bid to alleviate stress for the families and for the surrounding communities.
The plan was also designed to provide temporary accommodation for the families while the district continues to secure a permanent traveller site.
It has been trying to find a permanent traveller site now since the early 80s.
These seven proposed temporary sites had been:
● Fishpond Meadows Overspill car park, Ashbourne
● Agricultural Business Centre, Bakewell
● Old Station Close, Rowsley
● Matlock Station car park
● Artists Corner car park, Matlock Bath
● Matlock Bath Station car park
● Land at Middleton Road, Wirksworth
Tim Braund, the council’s director of regulatory services, stressed to councillors that providing the specific “temporarily tolerated” sites would give the authority “a degree of control over the situation that does not currently exist”
He said without the temporary sites “the two traveller families can stay wherever they want to and we would have to leave them there”.
Mr Braund explained that without an approved site to move travellers to, the council has no legal ability to relocate them. He said court bailiffs will not evict travellers from a site without another to direct them to, a problem the council has failed to solve for more than a generation.
Of the two families which the council has a legal responsibility for, one is currently staying on the Matlock station car park and the other is staying in Bakewell at the Agricultural Business Centre.
Cllr Tony Morley said the move to ignore the proposals for seven temporary sites was to “focus the minds” of council officers purely on getting a permanent traveller site solidified.
The proposed permanent site is a small patch – and former landfill – in Knabhall Lane, near Tansley. Councillors approved plans to spend £25,000 investigating potentially harmful substances coming from the former landfill and whether this would make it unviable for a traveller site.
These investigations are to take three to four months, said Rob Cogings, the council’s director of housing.
Meanwhile, Mr Braund said it could take “many months” for a permanent site to be delivered, with Knabhall Lane currently “not usable”.
Knabhall Lane was approved as the council’s earmarked temporary and permanent traveller site nearly a year ago – in September 2020.
Mr Braund said the families themselves would rather they were allowed to stay at sites longer while the residents in each are want shorter limits on stays, saying the eight weeks at each temporary site represented a compromise.
Lee Gardner, the council’s legal services manager, updated the authority on the current dispute over the ownership of the Knabhall Lane site.
He said the Land Registry had accepted that the district council was the legal owner, after being presented with a number of deeds and a barristers’ opinion.
Cllr Peter O’brien said a law firm was currently challenging the ownership of the site, with Mr Gardner saying the case “isn’t in court yet. Mr Gardner said the council was “in a very, very strong position to defend any dissenting voices”.
Mr Cogings said the Knabhall Lane site is “suboptimal” and that the council “has not got the best site” but has been unable to find a better one after years of searches.
Cllr Garry Purdy, leader of the council, told the meeting: “We have spent years looking for sites, there is no perfect site. Nobody wants these people and these families do not want pushing around all the time.
“We don’t push people out of their homes if they commit crimes, so why should we punish the families like this?”
He said he has dealt with travellers since he was a police officer in the 1960s and said there was “a mix of good and bad”.
Cllr Purdy said “it is an accident of birth” and “these poor people don’t ask to be born as a traveller, they are the most persecuted in the land”. The council approved spending £10,000 on height barriers on a number of “vulnerable” councilowned car park sites in order to prevent access by travellers.
Officers say height barriers cannot be installed at all council-owned car parks because the authority “must ensure that adequate provision remains for the parking of high-sided vehicles”.
Two traveller families can stay wherever they want to and we would have to leave them there. Tim Braund