From the responses that we have received so far it has become clear that a number of reoccuring themes have emerged.  Whilst it is not possible to respond to every query individually, these themes have been addressed in our Frequently Asked Questions section.

People were invited to give their views on proposals to provide a Travellers Transit site on one of three potential sites situated to the west of Coalville. Views are required by 2^nd November 2007.

The issue of unauthorised encampments is national. The last annual caravan count in January 2007 showed over 3500 caravans with nowhere to legally stay. This is why the Government has required Local Authorities to carry out accommodation assessments for Gypsies and Travellers and is making 100% grants available for the development of new sites.

To help the East Midlands Regional Assembly decide how many permanent and transit pitches would be required a piece of research was commissioned by the combined local authorities in Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland. This document titled ‘Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Assessment for Leicestershire’ identified that there was a need to provide both permanent residential and transit sites in most Districts.

There are two types of Gypsy and Traveller site, permanent and transit.  The siting of permanent sites is identified by District Councils through local planning arrangements i.e. Local Development Frameworks.  Permanent sites can be provided either privately by Travellers themselves or by a local authority as part of its housing provision.

Transit sites can equally be privately or publicly provided. However a local authority owned site is needed for the police to be able to use the legislation described below.  Leicestershire does not have a site at the moment.

A change in legislation has provided the police with powers to direct trespassers to leave land which they are not authorised to use as long as suitable pitches on a local authority site are available. This means that if there is an unauthorised encampment on public or private land, the police can quickly move Travellers on to a local authority transit site.

The highest incidence of unauthorised encampments in the County is in North West Leicestershire with an average 20 unauthorised encampments each year.  This has been concentrated around 2 main locations, Coalville and Castle Donington. The County Council has collected data for this since 1997:-

Total number of unauthorised encampments Jan1997-Dec 2006

The data suggests therefore that the most appropriate place to have a Travellers Transit Site is in North West Leicestershire District where there is the highest number of unauthorised encampments.

Experience in other areas of the country where Travellers Transit Sites have been set up suggests that there will be a number of benefits for the area including:-

The Council has therefore used a number of criteria in order to identify the most suitable location for a site including:-  

Following application of the criteria the Council has identified and is proposing to develop a site at one of the following locations (please click on the links below to view the site plans):-

You can also view the location plan (PDF)and a sketch (JPG file) of what the sites would look like.  

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Any site would be properly managed and have an on-site warden.  Traveller site residents would be issued with a short formal agreement and expected to pay rent and costs of on-site services.

The options and indicative site layouts are being displayed at the two nearest libraries at Coalville and Ashby, at County Hall on the County Council’s website and also at North West Leicestershire District Council main reception.

The County Council consulted the public, neighbouring authorities, the Police and other local agencies, the Gypsy and Travelling Community, Government Office and Regional Housing Board on the proposals.

Please click on one of the questions below to be view the response.  If you wish you can just scroll down and view all of the questions and responses.

34% of all unauthorised Traveller encampments in the County, during the last 10 years, have been in North West Leics.

Gypsies and Travellers will continue to stop in inappropriate places right across the County, until the Council provides somewhere legal, safe and suitable for them to go.  The council can move Travellers on, but cannot legally stop them coming into the County.

Following the failure of the generic bid, the County Council tried a different approach to site selection. Instead of only looking at local authority owned property as requested by Government, it mapped out settlements with doctors surgeries and schools. Then the location of Traveller unauthorised encampments were overlaid, which reduced the number of possible locations from eight to two. These were Coalville and Castle Donington. Significantly more unauthorised encampments were in the Coalville area and so the search area for a transit site concentrated on this area. Looking at its own land ownership first, the Snibston site came out as the land and school building have been declared surplus. We then found the Slaughterhouse site on the A511 was for sale and finally identified the other Sinope site, which was privately owned and for sale. The sites were checked against the criteria and preliminary enquiries were undertaken, checking planning, highways and location of services. All the sites identified matched well against the criteria listed and hence were put forward for consultation.

The cost of developing a transit site will depend on the outcome of surveys and investigations.  It will also depend on detailed design, relevant to the chosen site.

Once the public consultation exercise is over and a site agreed upon, the work on detailed design and costings will begin. However, the government have indicated to local authorities that they would be willing to provide 100% grant to support the reasonable cost of providing transit sites.

Running costs will in part be provided by the Travellers themselves and the remainder will be shared by all seven Districts and the County Council wherever the transit site is built, working in partnership.

Which ever site is chosen, a proper highways access, will be required.  Some of the sites would require (eg St Mary’s Lane) the adjoining road to be widened to accommodate longer vehicles and two-way traffic.  Others will need some highway works, which will need to be agreed with Highway Engineers.

It will enable unauthorised campers, who are causing a nuisance, to be moved on quickly.  In the short-term until further transit sites are provided in other districts, if there are Travellers, in excess of the pitches available, landowners will need to resort to the existing powers to remove trespassers. Therefore, until there are sufficient local authority transit sites over the County, only a partial solution will be afforded.

There is no evidence regarding the effect of permanent or transit sites on property prices.  An independent study in Scotland by the Planning Exchange and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that although there were some claims that house prices would be affected, these proved hard to establish.  The study said a new home being built within 50m of the boundary of one site suggested the impact on the local housing market had been minimal.

Experiences in other local authority areas do not evidence a reduction in property values, once they are operating well.  Once a site is established and providing it is well managed, the fears of residents about the negative impact on their area were not borne out.

In area which is subject to regular incidents of unauthorised traveller encampments provision of official transit sites could improve the situation.

The sites will either have an on-site warden or a warden will be present each day to monitor Travellers coming & leaving, ensuring that occupants sign up to a proper licence agreement, setting out the terms and conditions for taking a pitch, paying a licence fee and running costs.  The warden will also ensure that the terms of the agreement are being adhered to and the site is clean, tidy and trouble free.  The pitches will be residential only and business activities will not be allowed.

The County Council already successfully operates two permanent Traveller sites.

The maximum period a family can stay is 3 months, after which time notice to terminate will be served and if necessary enforcement action will be taken to move the Traveller on.

Owing to the nature of Traveller life, it is expected that Travellers will wish to move on a lot quicker than that.  However there may be cases where Travellers will wish to stay for the full 3 months.

If there is a need to find permanent accommodation for any particular family, the site manager and Travellers Liaison Service, will work with other agencies to find a solution.

It is very difficult to predict how many children of families who use the transit site will go to school.  Attendance at school depends on the age of the family, the timing of traveller arrivals.  Travellers are more mobile between spring and autumn.

The Traveller Education Service at the County Council already supports schools and Gypsy and Traveller families, to enable attendance and integration at school.  This will continue wherever and whenever needed.

As such a high proportion of unauthorised encampments are in the North West Leics area, there are already a number of traveller children being educated and these travel in each day to specific schools, which gives consistency and stability to the schools and pupils.

Local amenities can be found nearby in Coalville and nearby settlements.

Travellers are affected by restrictions imposed by Foot and Mouth disease and Blue Tongue, just like the resident population.  While Travellers do move around the country they would have to come into direct contact with foot and mouth infected farms and the animals to pose a risk.  Blue Tongue is not passed by animal to animal but is transferred by a specific midge.  Markets, store markets and others people such as farm machinery or feed sales representatives would present a higher risk to transferring disease.  Further information can be sought from the DEFRA website www.defra.gov.uk

The Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Needs Assessment for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland, carried out by Birmingham University and published in April this year, states that there is a need for around 20 Transit pitches in North West Leicestershire and around 100 across Leicestershire, Leicester City and Rutland as a whole

These pitches need to be a mix of Socially Rented (Council run) and privately owned. If any privately owned site was developed by the County Council it would take away much needed existing private provision, which would still need to be identified to meet future need.