Possession proceedings — New age travellers — Whether council under duty to accommodate — Whether falling under definition of “gypsies” — Whether economic element necessary to show “nomadic way of life” — Judgment for council
The two applicants lived in converted vehicles on land at Blackdown, Hardy’s Monument, near Dorchester, Dorset. They claimed to be gypsies within the meaning of section 16 of the Caravan Sites Act 1968, having adopted a nomadic way of life since 1983 and 1984 respectively and intended continuing to pursue that habit of life. Under section 16, gypsies meant “persons of nomadic habit of life whatever their race or origin, but does not include members of an organised group of travelling showmen, or of persons…in travelling circuses”. The council stated that the applicants were “not of a class to whom [they] owed a duty to accommodate” and that they had no particular purpose for adopting the nomadic habit save that it was their preferred lifestyle. They sought judicial review of that decision on the grounds, inter alia, that the council were in breach of their duty to provide “adequate accommodation” under the Act.
Held The application was refused.
1. The term “new age travellers” was not a legal term of art. The council, for the purposes of the instant case, regarded it as the appropriate description for persons who travelled round the country, not in pursuit of work which required a nomadic way of life, but rather in order to squant from time to time on land which did not belong to them.
2. There was some evidence that from time to time the applicants undertook some forms of work, but the council had committed themselves to an interpretation of the term “gypsies” which did not cover them.
3. Most recently the term had been considered in R v South Hams District Council, ex parte Gibb [1993] EGCS 179. In that case the word “nomadic” conveyed a concept which, in modern times, would generally be an economic purpose in circumstances that would commonly be understood to be nomadic. Travellers who sought a site for themselves to carry on their own lifestyle and whose travel arose to a material degree from being moved on did not come within that concept.
4. Although the applicants argued that a “nomadic habit of life” meant no more nor less than a settled habit of moving from place to place and it contained no qualification to the effect that the purpose of so moving had to be an economic one, it had to be remembered that the purpose of the Act was to accord rights to gypsies.
5. It did not intend to confer benefits on any person simply because he had no permanent home of own and made a habit of moving from place to place to live.
6. The notion of economic independence or at least of an aspiration to economic independence was inherent in the idea of a nomadic life. The approach therefore was to identify with reasonable clarity the class of persons whom Parliament intended to protect. That approach was supported by exceptions to “gypsies”, ie “organised group of travelling showmen”, whose travelling was intimately connected with their work. Accordingly, the council were entitled to conclude on the facts that the applicants had no rights under the Act.
David Watkinson (instructed by Bindman & Partners, as agents for Bobbetts Mackan, of Bristol) appeared for the applicants; Timothy Straker (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard, as agents for the solicitor to Dorset County Council) appeared for the council.
