The Post Bag: Letters To Squall

Survival vs Ideals

Squall 13, Summer 1996, pg. 65.

Dear Squall,

I’ve been involved to some extent in a successful attempt to get planning permission for a small (new) traveller site. I won’t be specific ‘cos I can be honest then. But the score is this: we were on a disused caravan site with water, toilet block and hard-standing. When, just before the CJA got passed, the local authority started fining the landowner for not evicting us (he was alright) we got about £140 together and paid for a planning application. We needed the landowner’s signature to say he was aware of what was going on (but not his actual approval).

It took a year for the first decision - a refusal - and another six months to get a successful appeal decision (we stayed on the site all this time).

As soon as we put the application in we had to abide by our own terms - what we’d applied for. The initial application was drawn up without legal advice, which in retrospect was a pity.

We got loads of help from Friends & Families of Travellers plus the Childrens’ Society and other people who sorted us out with legal advice for the initial hearing and the appeal hearing.

You can’t get legal aid for planning permission applications (as far as I know) and we’d have been buggered without the help we were given.

So, sometimes when people come to visit with their homes they get fucked off straight away, or if no-one could be arsed to get stroppy they’d get to stay for a bit before having to move again, ‘cos we couldn’t go over the applied-for number of plots.

It’s a big, nasty compromise to make. To anyone wanting to get judgemental I say this: risks become harder to take the more you risk losing. The practicals of dealing with authority are (to me) the same as negotiating with a victorious army.

When you begin to negotiate you are accepting defeat: the battle for a life controlled by the person living it is in some ways lost when you decide you need to deal with planning authorities. Having set the aim of a long-term park up, then all considerations have to come second to that aim if you really want to achieve it.

As a rent-paying traveller you (I) become by a greater or lesser amount different to a squatting traveller. My experience is that you have to encourage those who can swing the decision of the planning authorities to think well of you as a bunch of non-individuals.

When the bigots started to stick their oar in it was important that they had no real shock-horror stories to wave in the face of the locals. This made it possible for them to believe their own bullshit ideas about who or what we are: ‘cos no way are they gonna be happy with the idea that we’re a load of individual weirdos doing what we want with our lives and fuck authority if it objects.

But there’s nothing very fuck authority about getting planning permission: it’s a lot less obvious than that. There’s a lot of people who really are Nazis thru’ and thru’, and all planning does is rob them of the chance to fuck you off one more time.

But they will keep trying, and by using law and authority to frustrate them you can be more successful than by being up front and telling them to fuck themselves. There is a cost, and it is a big BUT: you have to make a major compromise to the eyes and ears of authority by appearing to conform totally, I think it’s inevitable that to some degree the appearance becomes reality. If you can live with that, and can find a suitable site and landlord, go for it and good luck.

Further legal information from Friends & Families of Travellers and the Children’s Society.

John
Wokingham