Court delays can often hold up action on evicting Traveller encampments in parks in Bristol by several weeks. Applying for a possession order used to take Bristol City Council staff a fortnight, but this process can now take much longer.
Last summer a giant encampment was set up on the Downs, before moving onto two other parks in the city. But despite this, last year was described as “one of our quieter years”, by one expert working for the council.
Travellers often stay on the Downs, and have been doing so for centuries, but the recent rise of vehicle dwellers is a separate phenomenon. Councillors on the Downs committee were updated about the legal issues with Gypsy Roma Traveller encampments on Monday, January 13.
Ian Bowen, Gypsy Roma Traveller service coordinator, said: “The Downs have been used as a stopping place for over 300 years, before many of the houses were there. Bristol has always been on a trade route, and it always has been for Travellers. It may not feel like it, but 2024 was definitely one of our quieter years, in terms of the numbers. 2023 was a particularly busy year.
“When people stop on the Downs, it’s normally for one of two reasons. It’s either for people who are coming here to do some work, or for people who are coming here for hospital visits. Bristol’s Children Hospital is very well respected in the Traveller community. Also, we find that when people go to Great Ormond Street [a children’s hospital in London], they tend to stop in Bristol.
“They don’t tend to stop for long. The vehicle dwellers around the roads, they’ll treat that as their permanent residence. But Gypsy Travellers don’t, they’re passing through. It’s good in some respects but also negative, because when people are passing through they don’t necessarily respect the area as much as they might.”
There are two main pieces of legislation the council can use to move people on. The first, Section 77 of the Criminal Justice and Disorder Act, isn’t used in Bristol and was described as “too complicated”. Council staff need to find out the names of people in an encampment, and their vehicles, which isn’t always possible, to be able to use this piece of law in evictions.
Instead, council staff use a different piece of law, called a Part 55 possession order. This lets the council take control of land, without needing to find out the names of anybody in a group.
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But the problem is staff have to apply for an order through the County Court, a process which used to take a fortnight but now takes much longer, according to Mr Bowen. He added: “Most of the time, these groups have moved on before that happens. The process effectively starts as soon as we can get there, normally the following morning and sometimes the same day.
“Our legal team is very good, they take it very quickly. But then getting the case into the County Court — when I started it would normally take about two weeks to go through the County Court. That’s changed, and it’s a lot longer now. We’re tied by that.”
Last summer, there was a huge encampment on the Downs of 42 vehicles, with around 120 people, that went on to cause trouble on Horfield Common and in Eastville Park. The council used a High Court writ leftover from 2023 to move the group away from the Downs. Most encampments however are much smaller and cause fewer problems.
The police have other powers that can be used to evict Travellers, under the Criminal Justice Act and the new Police Act. Avon and Somerset Police used these powers to move on the huge encampment from Horfield Common last year, after reports of rocks being hurled at toddlers.
Mr Bowen said: “They caused a lot of crime and a lot of anti-social behaviour, so the police, for the first time it was ever used in Avon and Somerset, used the new powers to move them on. They went to Eastville Park and got moved on, and they went to Burnham-on-Sea and got moved on, because they were quite a challenging group.”
There are other Kafkaesque legal problems facing the council too. In 2019 the council was granted an injunction, which stops anybody from using a piece of land, and this was briefly successful. The following year, staff asked the courts to extend the injunction, but they were refused as then there was no recent evidence of people stopping there.
One recurring issue with Travellers in Bristol is dangerous driving, including with quadbikes. Again, the council struggles to act on complaints about this, and reports are better made to the police instead, who need evidence of any issues before they can take action.
Liberal Democrat Councillor Andrew Varney, lord mayor and chair of the Downs committee, said: “When I talk to the police, they normally say they need data. People often complain to their local councillor about an issue, they don’t tell the police — so when we tell the police they say ‘oh, well we don’t know about this’.
“The more that members of the public contact the police, the more data they’ll have, the more chance the police will be allocating resources appropriately to deal with problems. That’s upon all of us really, to make sure we’re reporting issues to the police.”