We were contacted by someone who wanted to expose how gypsies were onthe brink of being given carte blance to set up camp anywhere inEngland. Within hours we had placed the story in a leading Sundaynewspaper.
Gypsy threat to our beauty spots
The right of gypsies to set up camp in any of England’s most unspoilednatural settings is to be tested in a ground-breaking legal case.
In what has become known as the Battle of Hemley Hill, nine travellerfamilies who have illegally occupied an ancient site since Easter areapplying to settle there permanently.
Lined up against them are 600 residents who say the site on the ChilternHills, in Buckinghamshire, home to a 10,000-year-old road first laid down bythe Romans, is in the green belt.It is also officially classified as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
More is at stake than Hemley Hill, however, as experts say that if theGovernment’s Planning Inspectorate grants approval for a travellers’ sitethere, the same can potentially apply to any of 39 other AONBs aroundBritain, or to any other less protected site.
Mike Taylor, chief executive of the National Association of AONBs, said:“The consequences of the inspector siding with the travellers don’t bearthinking about. It isn’t so much that it would be used by travellers tosettle where they want, but how could councils then resist developers whowant to build a £1.5million housing estate in an area of outstanding naturalbeauty?”
Counsel for the gypsies is expected to point to new laws passed by theLabour government instructing local authorities to provide them withpermanent sites by 2012.
Wycombe District Council, which covers Hemley Hill, has made no provisionand has hurriedly commissioned a private £17,000 report that has come upwith half a dozen potential sites for travellers.
Chris Whitwell, director of Friends, Families and Travellers, a nationalgypsies charity, said: “I can’t comment on this site, but it is fair to saywe have been very disappointed by the lack of councils fulfilling theirlegal obligations for permanent sites.
“We have 25,000 travellers being moved from one illegal site to another atan annual cost of £18million. Perhaps the Wycombe case might act as awake-up call for authorities to get on with it.”
John Hughes is one of the 600 residents who will be attending a meetingorganised by the Planning Inspectorate to decide the fate of the site inspring.
He said: “It is frustrating when you know full well there is no way thatanybody would get planning permission for any sort of development of thatnature, to find that these things are going on all over the country.“If it can happen here, then it’s a precedent.
“This is the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It was one of thefirst set up in the country. It ranks alongside national parks and if ithappens here, literally anywhere in the country is open for gypsies andtravellers to grab.”
The Hemley Hill site has become a rubbish-strewn waste land with fumes fromfires and accompanying noise morning, noon and night.
Traders in the nearby town of Princes Risborough have found human excrementin their recycling bins, testimony to the lack of sanitary facilities.
Wycombe council agrees that it is not a suitable site for the travellers.But it is already running into opposition over several of the alternativesit has produced.
Among them is a section of Britain’s oldest road, Icknield Way and itsprehistoric pathways laid down by the Romans 10,000 years ago.
Another possible site lies above an Iron Age settlement which the councilpreviously refused to allow developers to build homes on because of itsprecious archaeological heritage.
Mr Hughes said: “The difficulty is the requirement being put on thecouncils from Government to provide permanent sites.“What we would like to see happening is the same law that applies toeverybody else applied to travellers and gypsies.
“We moved here 13 years ago and paid a great premium for the privilege ofliving here, and it is a great privilege. But here we are now faced with allof this.”
Wycombe council is putting its proposals out for public consultation untilthe end of January.