Your invitation for people to express views on grants for permanent homes for travellers (The Argus, May 28) implies that the wisdom of funding gypsy and traveller sites might be questionable.
As a national charity working in this field perhaps we can offer a few hard facts?
Within the UK there is a shortfall of gypsy and traveller site provision amounting to around 4,500 pitches. This equates to some 20,000 to 25,000 people in this country who have nowhere they can be legally.
To put this in the context of the three million new houses that will be needed over the next decade it means that if we were to provide just one gypsy/traveller pitch every time we built 670 new houses, the accommodation need would be met. The land required to provide 4,500 pitches is less than one square mile.
It is no big deal to identify suitable land to provide these sites, but it is a big deal in terms of human misery for those thousands of families, many with small children, who are constantly evicted and moved on, only to be evicted again a few days later.
Quite aside from the humanitarian considerations where is the economic sense in spending £18 million every year (yes, that's what it costs) shunting people from pillar to post and back again in this endless merry-go-round of eviction?
- Chris Whitwell, director, Friends, Families and Travellers, Community Base, Brighton
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