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Travelers Demand Community Housing

The Dale Farm Bulletin #6
July 12, 2007
For Immediate Release

Contact: Grattan Puxon, Secretary of Dale Farm Housing Association, +44 01206523528

400 Travelers at Dale Farm have lodged a joint homeless application demanding to be housed together if they are evicted next spring.

The Dale Farm Housing Association has discovered legal evidence which it believes will force local councils to find adequate accommodation sites for Traveler communities after they have been evicted.

Grattan Puxon, Secretary of the Dale Farm Housing Association, stated how a precedent was set by Crawley Council in 2005 after it offered hotel accommodation to 19 families which were evicted from a Bewbush site. Mr Puxon went on to declare that, “it would cost the council £100,000 pounds a night to house the 400 Travelers in a hotel. This is why the council needs to provide an alternative mobile home park near their 600 relatives on the legal site at Oak Lane, or leave them at Dale Farm.”

The joint homeless application was issued to the Basildon Local Council on Friday July 6. The Council has until Friday July 13 to issue its response to the Travelers. Basildon Council Leader Malcolm Buckley stated last week that, “any application is dealt with on its merits, but having said that, I don’t think that is anywhere big enough to house 400 people.”

The joint homeless application comes in the wake of the Basildon Council’s decision last week to stop eviction proceedings against eleven properties at Dale Farm, allowing them to stay put until at least next spring when the remaining 45 properties at Dale Farm face eviction if a judicial review is decided in the Council’s favor.

Dale Farm is currently the largest Travelers site in Europe with over 1,000 residents. Many of the residents living at Dale Farm are elderly, sick and have permanently resided at the illegal site since its inception seven years ago. The Travelers legally own the land on which they reside but have been repeatedly denied planning application. Travelers feel that the planning rejections are racially tainted

• The Dale Farm Bulletin is produced on behalf of the Dale Farm Community Association by Grattan Puxon, Secretary of the Association, and Zach Scott, a 2007 Peace Fellow of The Advocacy Project . For more information, contact Dale Farm or Zach Scott. For the Dale Farm chronology and Association news, visit the Dale Farm partner page.

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