News / Bishopsworth
Traveller community could be moved on after council launches legal action
A Traveller encampment on the edge of Bishopsworth is facing eviction after Bristol City Council launched legal action to remove it.
The group arrived at the end of February and said they stayed longer than they would normally due to having repairs to do and family commitments.
Now the council is going through the courts, citing “a large number of complaints, the location of the group and the length of time they have been on the site” for its decision to evict.
But three separate members of the eight-vehicle encampment, located on a verge on Highridge Green, said they were not aware of the council’s wish to move them on, and would have left if told.
“We don’t like causing hassle,” said traveller Kricket. “Normally we’ve gone before any of this happens but we had some stuff to sort out.”
Bishopsworth councillor Richard Eddy criticised the time it has taken for the council to take action, saying that he was originally assured the travellers would be gone “within weeks” but they were still there seven weeks later.
“I have been councillor for Bishopsworth for a third-of-a-century and the city council has won a national reputation in that time for being pathetic, incompetent and a soft-touch for tackling travellers,” he said.
Councillor Richard Eddy called the site an “eyesore” that the council had failed to deal with
Eddy criticised “the growing eyesore on the common, the damage caused to the grass and the fact that the gypsy horses graze only yards from the Link Road (with) potentially serious safety consequences for them and motorists”.
The travellers said their horses were tethered and unable to reach the road, and were checked on several times a day.
“All the people on the estate down here they’ve been lovely,” Kricket said. “They’ve all been happy to see us; they’ve gone, ‘Oh we’ve got a bit of scrap for you’, or, ‘Oh, we’ve got a bit of work in the garden that needs doing.’ So we serve a purpose for the community as well, but we’re just trying to live.”
Luke Fox, who comes from a Traveller family dating back hundreds of years, said: “This is a cultural lifestyle. I have lived this way my entire life. I’ve got a boy who was born on the road; I was born on the road; my mum was born on the road.”
Fox said he didn’t want to move to the settled sites where travellers can stay legally, like the ones run by the council in Ashton Vale and Lawrence Weston.
“On the settled sites you can’t live like this. You can’t have open fires or animals or things like that which are cultural,” he said. “It’s either fully change your ways and be a different person or continue to be pushed from pillar to post.”
The camp has a number of horses and dogs, like Asbjørg – photo: Molly Pipe
Kricket said Travellers often faced pushback and prejudice against their lifestyle.
“Some places you’ll have people going by like 6 o’clock in the morning blaring their horns or people shouting slurs out the window,” she said.
“Society accepts racism and prejudice towards people who live this way. People who are born into it, they can’t help it. That is their culture.”
In a statement, a spokesperson from the council said: “An eviction of this nature is a last resort and not a decision we take lightly, but we will take action when an encampment starts to have an adverse impact on neighbouring homes. Our priority is to support ethnic gypsy and traveller communities onto full-time permanent sites.
“It is uncommon for us to have to take this sort of action, as we maintain a good relationship with the travelling community.”
Main photo: Molly Pipe
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