Glastonbury residents call for action to remove "shanty town" of travellers

Mendip District Council consulted with residents in March about plans for a public space protection order (PSPO) which would criminalise unauthorised traveller sites in and around the town.

The council’s scrutiny board met in Shepton Mallet on Wednesday evening (September 7) to discuss the findings of the consultation and recommend a course of action to the cabinet.

Here’s what you need to know about this long-running issue:

What does the PSPO involve?

If implemented, the new PSPO would cover both Glastonbury and Street, along with the surrounding villages – including Baltonsborough, Butleigh, Pilton and Wookey.

It is intended to further deter encampments which are already unlawful – namely those overnight on public highways, those trespassing on publicly-owned or -managed land, or those which stay in council-owned car parks.

The PSPO would change unlawful encampments from a civil matter to a criminal offence, with any encampment not deemed to be “reasonable, necessary or proportionate” or “having a reasonable excuse” being potentially subject to action in the courts.

The PSPO, if implemented, would be enforced by both Avon and Somerset Constabulary and the council’s own in-house enforcement team – and each encampment will be treated on a case-by-case basis.

This is one of many measures which are being pursued by the Glastonbury Unauthorised Encampment Multi-Agency Group (MAG), which includes representatives from the police and the county, district and town councils.

The others include double-yellow lines on Wellhouse Lane, installing boulders and bunds on Stone Down Lane near Glastonbury Tor, and creating a multi-user path on Bretenoux Road.

More than 850 people took part in the council’s consultation in March, of which 550 lived within the Glastonbury area (the BA6 postcode). Other respondents took part from as far afield as London, Nottingham, Powys, St. Ives, Stockton-on-Tees and Wakefield.

Of those surveyed, 38 per cent were generally in favour of the PSPO being implemented, while 58 per cent were against it.

Who is in favour of the PSPO?

Lillith Osborne, who leads the Conservative group on Glastonbury Town Council, spoke in favour of the PSPO, stating that it was “absolutely desperately needed by the people of the town.”

She added: “To talk about Glastonbury as a place of refuge and compassion is to absolutely ignore the awful experiences of people who have to live near these encampments.

“Staff at Tesco and Aldi have complained to us about the amount of shoplifting which is coming from the people living in the caravans around their shops.

“People are frightened about the amount of people coming into the town who have got absolutely no connection with the area.

“I’m not saying that people who live in caravans are by definition antisocial and behave badly – I’m sure that is not true at all.

“But the situation is at the moment that there are well over 100 caravans forming a kind of loose-knit shanty town around Glastonbury, that cause a great deal of distress to the residents.

“Ordinary people around the town are fed up. There are people who are moving their children of St. John’s School because of the antisocial behaviour.

“There are legal encampments within the wider unitary authority area, so they can be moved on. There is absolutely no reason why the population of one small town should be subjected to this.”

Glastonbury resident Margaret Bilsby spoke passionately in favour of the PSPO, claiming that travellers had destroyed the “once-beautiful” Kennard Moor Drove to the south-east of the town.

She said: “Four short years ago, Kennard Moor Drove was full of birdsong and wild-flowers. The banks of the River Brue teemed with wildlife, and all Glastonbury came to walk there – they walked their dogs there, children played there, dads taught their children how to fish in the river.

“The whole place is full of rotting caravans and filth. The riverbank is now used as a latrine, the wild-flowers have long gone. Voles that once lived along the bank have now disappeared, to be replaced by rats.

“The environmental department of this very council had to actually remove over a foot of toxic soil where once a caravan has stood –  I believe that was in February this year.

“Drugs are sold there, prostitution is carried out down there. This well-loved and well-used lane is now a no-go area for any resident brave enough to go down there.

“We want our lane back – and we want it back now.”

Who is against the PSPO?

Councillor Lindsay MacDougall, whose Glastonbury St. Mary’s ward covers the southern end of the town, said the town needed to treat travellers with “compassion” and noted the town deal would provide new legal sites where they could stay.

She said: “The vehicle count in Glastonbury is down from 195 to 139 – a 29 per cent reduction since the peak during lockdown.

“I acknowledge this is still high, but Glastonbury – it is agreed by most of us – has always been a place of refuge and compassion over the centuries.

“I’m here to express a widely-held view that this is a draconian response to criminalise parking of more than one night. At worse, caravans – that is, their homes – could be seized and children taken into care.

“The town deal is providing 30 pitches on Morlands and a further 30 to 60 [elsewhere], so there is a solution in the pipeline to at least some of this. This isn’t the right solution to this problem.

“I understand from enforcement officers and police that this PSPO will be ineffective, as there is nowhere for these people to go when it comes to a court hearing.

“Glastonbury rents are too expensive and in high demand – I know of many single people who’ve had to leave their community here to live as far away as Chard.”

The council’s asset management group voted in principle in July to sell off the majority of the Morlands site, with a small section being transferred to a third party and alternative provision being created using funds from the £23.6M town deal.

Further details of both the planned sale and the new site are expected to be made public later in the autumn.

Councillor Damon Hooton said Ms Osborne’s claims regarding shoplifting were “straight out of the Oswald Mosley book of campaigning”, referencing the founder of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.

He said: “Shoplifting is not purely down to one section of society – it is becoming endemic.

“The [Sainsbury’s] store in which I work in Frome is not a huge one, and we are losing tens of thousands of pounds a month to theft – and it’s going to get worse with the cost of living crisis.

“We have made a huge effort to go out and identify sites that could fulfil our Local Plan shortcomings. There is resistance from within the council to complete this work.”

What did the scrutiny board decide – and what happens next?

Councillor Heather Shearer said the current solutions to unauthorised encampments were “slow and costly”, adding that the council had a duty to protect all Glastonbury citizens.

She said: “Whatever supportive measures we as a council might put in place, it is quite clear that we can’t provide enough support to all the travelling or non-bricks and mortar community.

“By proportion of the overall population, Glastonbury has got 20 or 30 times more van-dwelling households than Bristol – nowhere in the country has as many.

“There’s nothing wrong with negotiated stop-overs, but there is an excessive and disproportionate volume of lived-in vehicles for very extended periods of time in quite a small town and space.

“There are many different people within the non-bricks and mortar community. The majority of them, I am sure, want to respect all communities in Glastonbury, but a minority don’t.

“This will allow us to deal with these situations actively and flexibly.”

Councillor Liz Leyshon said she had passed evidence to the police about alleged unscrupulous business practices surrounding the caravans.

She said: “Many of the people living in roadside encampments were very obviously vulnerable and in need of support.

“People – I know not whom – are buying caravans and towing them with vans without number plate. They take them and they drop them off at an agreed place; people arrive and then they pay for those caravans, or they pay rent.

“People – I don’t know whether these are the same people or other people – control who can live in certain areas like Kennard Moor Drove, and if they don’t people don’t pay for their caravan or pay their rent, the caravans are torched.

“That is happening in a town that has a rightful reputation for tolerance and good will, and as a spiritual home for many people. That is why I support this PSPO as one of many actions that we are taking.”

Councillor Nick Cottle, whose Glastonbury St. Edmund’s ward covers the east of the town, added: “This to me is just another tool in the toolbox. I don’t think it’s discriminatory against anyone in particular.

“We need somewhere for these people to go, because there are a lot of people there who work for a living and just can’t afford to find something in bricks and mortar.

“We’ve got people who don’t want to live in bricks and mortar, which is fine – they want to travel. But then you do have a small-ish amount of people who are, if I’m polite, awkward – and that’s a big issue for the local communities.

“You’ve got to live in Glastonbury and understood it to understand the problem.”

The council’s cabinet will make a final decision on the proposals later in the year.