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GYPSIES/TRAVELLERS IN SCOTLAND: The Twice-yearly Count - No. 6: July 2004

COUNCIL SITES

Provision of sites and pitches

In 1971 the Scottish Office offered Councils funding to meet the costs of providing fully serviced sites for Travelling People. Funding was also offered for upgrading of early sites. Initially, funding covered 75% of the capital costs but later was increased to 100%. Funding came to an end in 1998, apart from a few additional proposed sites and upgrading applications still in the pipeline.

The site network has grown, albeit slowly, over some 24 years (Table 1) and it was seven years after the funding scheme was first introduced before the first site was opened. The last two sites were not opened until 2002, bringing the total provision to 37. Three mainland Councils (East Ayrshire, East Renfrewshire and Inverclyde) still make no site provision for Gypsies/Travellers. No requirement for site provision has been identified within any of the three Islands Councils.

Preliminary applications for funding of one or two additional sites in the pipeline when the funding scheme was formally wound up at the end of 1998 have not since come to fruition.

While in general sites are intended for year-round use, three sites, open only in the summer months to meet seasonal need, were developed to meet this.

Seven Councils have provided more than one site within their area. Highland has four, one of which is for seasonal use; Argyll & Bute, Fife and North Lanarkshire have each provided three; Dumfries & Galloway, South Ayrshire, and South Lanarkshire each have two.

The following terms are used to distinguish the differing status of Council sites:

• 'all-year (active)': sites open throughout the year and available for use at the time of the count;
• 'seasonal (active)': sites intended for use only during the summer months and available for use at the time of the count;
• 'all-year (closed)': sites intended for use throughout the year but not available for use at the time of the count;
• 'seasonal (closed)': sites intended for use only during the summer months;
• 'missing return': sites for which no return was made by the Council concerned.

Gains and losses of sites and pitches

The 37 sites developed between 1978 and 2002 provided a total of 599 pitches, of which 37 are for seasonal use only, generally from April to September

Table 1 shows that nearly half the sites (16) have been upgraded at some stage in their life, in three instances (Motherwell in North Lanarkshire, Angus and Aberdeen) also providing additional capacity. In total, this has led to the provision of an additional 19 pitches. Applications for funding to upgrade a few early sites also currently remain in the pipeline.

These increases in capacity, have also been offset by losses, and not all the sites and pitches developed over the past 30 years are still available for use. In a few instances proportionally minor loss has been a deliberate choice by the Council reflecting changing needs within a particular site such as the allocation of one pitch on the Arran site to a resident manager making it a seven rather than eight pitch site. Similarly one pitch on the Inverness site and two on the Stirling site have been re-allocated for community use, reducing effective capacity to 19 and 18 pitches respectively.

A more serious loss is the permanent closure, since 1996, of three complete sites, two in North Lanarkshire and one in Renfrewshire, respectively with 26, 16 and 16 pitches, an overall loss of 58 pitches. North Lanarkshire, initially the Council with the highest level of provision, now has only a single 16 pitch site at Airdrie. The Renfrewshire site at Paisley was effectively destroyed by vandalism in 1998 and to date has not been re-instated.

Table 1 - Sites provided from 1971- 2003 with subsequent changes in pitch capacity

Despite the provision of 19 additional pitches through upgrading, site closure and loss of individual pitches and the closure of three complete sites has led to a net loss of 41 pitches overall giving a current total of 539 pitches, 37 of which are for summer use only.

Site occupancy

Information on official Council sites draws primarily on site management records and site managers' extensive experience of local situations and events. This provides the most robust data on numbers and size of households and about patterns of movement on and off sites since the previous count.

Sites vary in size but all are divided into individual pitches, each destined for a single household unit with space for a caravan and a lorry or van and each with its individual amenity unit providing bath or shower and toilet facilities, space for domestic appliances plus storage space. Sites are managed through a variety of Council departments, mainly in the areas of housing, social or community services or environmental services. Provided there are vacant pitches on a site any Gypsies/Travellers coming to an area may apply for a tenancy.

Occasionally, a household may live in a large trailer but also have a smaller caravan within their pitch area, used as overflow sleeping accommodation where the household is large and it is preferable to segregate some of its members by age or by gender. Alternatively a second smaller caravan may be used by working members of the household to travel away from base for a few days or weeks at a time, while the rest of the household remains on the site. A return may also identify a very large household which is allowed to rent two adjacent pitches, though counting as a single tenancy. Others may record more than one household occupying a single pitch where there were visitors staying on the day of the count or two closely related families may be allowed a joint tenancy on a single pitch. Each of these scenarios is rare and is a pragmatic response to particular local circumstances, mostly short term.

The extent to which each site is used can be
determined by the proportion of pitches falling into each of four categories at the time of the twice-yearly counts:

• 'let (occupied)', i.e. tenant occupying pitch at time of count;
• 'let (absent)', i.e. tenanted pitch with tenant absent;
• 'vacant (available)', i.e. pitch available for potential tenant;
• 'not available', i.e. pitches not available for letting for some reason.

Levels of use vary considerably from site to site. Figure 1 shows the occupancy patterns for all sites for which returns were made, relating the pitch status directly to the size of the site. In practice there is no direct relationship between site size and use pattern.

• Of the 537 pitches on 34 sites, 336 (63%) were let at the count date;
• 261 pitches (49%) were occupied, accounting for just over three out of four tenanted pitches overall;
• 75 pitches (14%) were let but absent, accounting for about nearly one in four of the tenanted pitches;
• almost all pitches without tenants (163 or 30%) were still classed as vacant (available);
• 38 pitches (7%) were classed as not in use.

The proportion of pitches let (i.e. both occupied and absent) is slightly higher than the equivalent figure for the summer count in 2003 (61%) but lower than in 2002 (68%). Actual occupancy of tenanted pitches (i.e. excluding those with absent tenants) is higher than in 2003 (42%) but again lower than in 2002 (51%). Nine sites were fully let and another five had at least three-quarters of the pitches let. Nevertheless, at the other end of the scale, three sites (Glasgow, Moray and North Ayrshire [Arran]) were completely untenanted.

Across the 34 active sites for which data was available, just under one third of all pitches (30%) were vacant but available for use in July 2004. Two sites were completely untenanted but with all their pitches available for letting at the time of the count while another nine sites had more than half their pitches untenanted but available for tenants.

Eight sites indicated pitches not in use but on some of these the number unavailable represented a substantial proportion of the site's capacity. Eighteen out of 20 pitches on the Moray site were recorded as not available for use, while six out of ten on the Argyll & Bute (Dunoon) site and five out of 16 on the North Ayrshire (Irvine) were out of action. A quarter of the pitches on the Clackmannan site were currently out of use but the January 2004 count noted that the site was going through a major repair programme following vandalism. In other cases only one or two pitches were not available. Comments by site managers within their return forms indicate the nature of some of the necessary repairs and upgrading processes for amenity units and other site buildings to enhance both site quality and security:

'CCTV system installed, metal shutter over chalet doors and bollards on each pitch to stop illegal parking.'

Extensive refurbishment of utility units; cavity wall and loft insulation, plasterboard wall lining, new wall heaters, new bathroom tiling and mini-bath & shower; new storage units. Work undertaken to prevent camping at (X) Industrial Estate.'

'Modernisation to site now completed in February - some pitches were closed for painting, flooring etc.'

'The site is currently undergoing improvements.'

Site managers' comments about significant events which may have affected the situation on their own site help to enhance the overall picture, since it may reflect things happening across a wider area within Scotland. Some of these help to explain why pitches are untenanted or why they are unavailable for use. The July 2004 count provided rather fewer comments about problem incidents but where they occur they follow similar patterns to those in earlier summaries. Examples of these include the following:

'Two pitches at (site) unavailable due to vandalism.'

'General unrest still having an impact on the Travellers living on the site.'

'Lot of aggravation around July because of Gypsy Traveller events elsewhere in region.'

'Site has been un-occupied since January '03 - No change.'

'Site temporarily closed (since 1998).

'Feuding still on-going, resulting in assaults, stabbings, caravans being burnt and vandalised. Whilst we offer Travellers on [unauthorised] encampments, pitches at (X site), all are unwilling to take up offer due to unrest within Traveller community.'

'X site has experienced inter family disputes which caused some tenants to leave temporarily, but all have returned since.'

…though one rather more unusual reason for low tenancy levels was quoted…

'According to X, Travellers state [that] (site) haunted and will not stay on it.'

Tenant Movement

Tenants on Council sites are able to spend a certain amount of time away from the site without relinquishing their tenancy. Generally the maximum time their pitches can be left empty with a secured tenancy is twelve weeks in the year. Across the 31 tenanted sites, just under a quarter of pitches were tenanted but unoccupied on the count date. A third of the sites had no temporary absences and the same proportion had up to a quarter of their tenants absent. Highest levels of absence (80% or more) were recorded on a small Argyll & Bute site (North Ledaig) and two Highland sites (Spean Bridge and Inverness). Two other sites (Aberdeen and Dundee) had just over half their tenants absent.

As well as recording absence at the time of the count, the return takes account of absence over the preceding six months, in this instance the spring and early summer when mobility generally begins to increase. While absences over this period as a proportion of total tenancies are essentially site managers' estimates rather than hard data they are clearly common, but with no identifiable pattern.

Figure 2 shows the patterns of the two sets of absence. Of the 34 active sites, nine recorded no absence under either heading and so are excluded from the figure. Of the other 25 sites, on six all tenants had been off-site temporarily at least at some point, and on a further three at least four out of five had. However, over those nine sites, absence at the time of the count itself was much lower.

Length of stay on sites

Recent counts have shown that tenants are choosing to settle for increasingly long periods on the same site, even though they may spend occasional short periods away from it, as indicated above. For the 31 sites with tenants at the time of the count (excluding the three sites currently closed and the three officially open but untenanted sites (Glasgow, Moray and North Ayrshire [Arran]), the following overall pattern emerges. Allowing for the small actual numbers on some sites, the proportions are broadly consistent with those in the previous summer (bracketed percentages are the equivalent for July 2003).

Longer term tenancies

• 47% of tenants had been there for more than two years (44%);
• 21% had been there for between one and two years (19%);

Medium term tenancies

• 12% had been for between six months and a year (13%)
• 12% had been there for between three and six months (12%)

Short-term tenancies

• 8% had been there for three months or less (12%).

Figure 3 shows the tenancy duration pattern on each site, in terms of actual numbers of tenants (both present and temporarily absent) at the count date. A number of the larger sites stand out by reason of their very high proportions of long-term tenancy, indicating a largely static population with only a few more recent arrivals. At the other end of the spectrum, the three seasonal sites could only have had short term tenants by the time of the count.

Site characteristics

The summary of the January 2004 count examined a number of characteristics of Council sites to see whether, in combination, sites fell into discernable groups. Three principal criteria were used:

• size of site (large/medium/small)
• proportion of tenanted pitches at the count date (high/medium/low)
• proportion of tenancies of a year or more (high/medium/low)

Two other criteria were included, though in practice these appeared to make little difference to the groupings:

• age of site (old [20+ years]; mid-age [10-19 years]; new [under 10 years]))
• whether or not the site had been upgraded

Inevitably the categories were fairly crude, given the number of sites available and the spread of the data within each criterion. Nevertheless a number of broad groups did appear to exist and were summarised in the January 2004 report. In the light of this the experiment was repeated with the July 2004 data to see the extent to which the perceived groupings held up at a different season of the year. Of course, three of the criteria (site size, age and upgrading) are common to both counts, leaving the proportions of tenanted pitches on a site and the proportion of long term tenants (those of over one year's duration) as the potential points of difference. Table 2 shows the results of the comparison between January and July with the January 2004 figures in brackets where there was any difference in category. While almost
inevitably there are some differences, there is still a strong degree of consistency. Out of the 27 sites for which comparative data was available, almost half (12) displayed the same pattern at both counts

Table 2 - Comparative characteristics of sites in January and July 2004

(Bracketed letters refer to the January 2004 count) (base = 26 sites)

• Of the larger sites, six (Edinburgh; Perth & Kinross; West Dunbartonshire; South Lanarkshire [Larkhall]; Fife [Cupar] and East/Midlothian) share high tenancy levels. Half of these six are among the oldest sites and half have been upgraded. All shared high tenancy levels at both dates and, with one exception, medium to high tenancy longevity. The exception was the East/Midlothian site where there had been a number of departures as a result of incidents earlier in the year.
• At the other end of the scale, four of the five smallest sites (South Ayrshire; South Lanarkshire [East Kilbride]; Highland [Kentallen] and, the newest site of all, Fife [Kelty]) shared high tenancy levels at both dates and the fifth (Argyll& Bute [Lorn]) was fairly close. They also shared high tenancy longevity, for two of them an increase on the January position. With one exception (Fife [Kelty]) all were between 10 and 20 years old
• Between these two extremes, the other six large sites (West Lothian; Aberdeen; Dundee; Moray; Highland [Inverness]; and Stirling) continue to share medium to low tenancy levels. Their tenancy longevity is more variable between the lower and middle parts of the range. Most of these are in the mid-age range, with one (Aberdeen) being older and one (Stirling) relatively new.
• Within the medium-sized sites there are four (Angus; North Ayrshire [Irvine]; Fife [Kirkcaldy] and Falkirk) which, except for marginal difference in size, are similar to the first group above, sharing high levels of tenancy and longevity - though the last of these was adversely affected by a fire and was temporarily closed for a period so again has not had the opportunity to build up its longevity figures. Particular localised factors probably account for some of the lower tenancy and longevity levels among the other medium-sized sites. Two medium-sized sites (Argyll & Bute [Lochgilphead] and Highland [Spean Bridge]) both had medium tenancy levels but differed in their tenancy longevity with the Argyll & Bute site having the more stable tenancy pattern. The Highland site declined in its tenancy level between the two dates. Of the remaining four medium-sized sites (Clackmannan-shire; East Dunbartonshire; and the two Dumfries and Galloway sites) all shared low tenancy levels in January though most of these tenants were long-term. Since then the Clackmannan and East Dunbartonshire sites have increased their tenancy levels though the latter has fewer long-term tenants.

Tenancy change

A total of 91 pitches were said to have changed hands in the six months preceding the count.

On 12 sites there had been no changes and most of the rest had only a few. On the other hand, eight sites had more than a quarter changing hands. In contrast the very small seven pitch seasonal site at Newtonmore in Highland has as many as 22 within about three months since it opened for the season. Much depends on the mix of tenants on the site at any time and on events within the Gypsy/Traveller community as shown by some of the comments referred to earlier about spells of unrest or uncertainty leading to movement away from particular sites. As with waiting lists, other factors, such as the perceived desirability of a particular site, affect turnover levels such as those in East/Midlothian, Aberdeen, Edinburgh; South Lanarkshire (Larkhall), Argyll & Bute (Lochgilphead) and the other seasonal site in Aberdeenshire. Occasionally even the longest-term tenants do eventually move.

'X family had been residents since site opened [1989], have now moved into mainstream housing.'

Waiting for vacancies

Under half the sites had waiting lists for tenants in the summer of 2004 :

• A total of 72 households were on waiting lists across 13 sites;
• Five sites had five or fewer applicants on their lists;
• Only 38 households were recorded as having been turned away from ten sites for lack of space.

Of the sites with applicants on their lists, seven (South Lanarkshire [Larkhall] (13); Edinburgh (8); Angus (7); Perth & Kinross (6); West Dunbartonshire (6); Fife [Kirkcaldy] (6); North Ayrshire [Irvine] (6)) are fairly large, long-established sites with a record of stability, which means there is little likelihood of vacancies arising. Kelty in Fife (2) has only been open less than two years and has filled a long-standing gap in the Fife coverage, so it is still likely to be in demand.

The South Lanarkshire [East Kilbride] (5) and South Ayrshire (3) sites appear to be attractive, perhaps because both are small, quiet and and have a record of stability. In addition, the South Ayrshire site has been substantially upgraded in recent years.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the largest number of potential tenants turned away for lack of vacancies were the 11 in Edinburgh and six in Perth and Kinross, both with the largest waiting lists and a record of stability. The other eight sites from which hopefuls had to be turned away account for only 21 households in total.

People

Council sites provide data on the number of Gypsy/Traveller households and people living there which enables profiles to be built up of each site's population, from which a more general picture of the wider Gypsy/Traveller population across Scotland can be estimated (no individual household or person can be identified through the count).

At the time of the July 2004 count, excluding the three long-term closed sites, 34 sites were 'active'. However, as noted earlier, three of these (Moray; Glasgow and North Ayrshire [Arran]) while officially open, were recorded as empty. In addition, the Highland (Spean Bridge) and Argyll & Bute (North Ledaig) sites were tenanted but with their households away at the time of the count. This leaves 29 occupied sites with all or some of their tenants, present at the count date, for which population data was given. Table 3 shows the numbers of people on each of these 29 sites, ranked in order of mean household size. Around the overall mean of 3.4 pph, sites vary widely in household size from as many as 7.4 persons down to single person households.

The population on these may be summarised as follows:

• 259 households
• 876 people
• mean household size of 3.8.

Table 3 - Households and People on Council sites in July 2004

(base = 29 sites)

Mean household size is in the middle of the range of equivalent figures for the six previous summer counts from July 1998 to July 2003 (3.6; 3.1; 3.4; 3.3; 3.4; 3.2).

Within this population, the age-structure remains broadly as in previous counts and with little or no difference between males and females (Table 4):

• Pre-school-age children account for 11% of the total;
• School-age children (5-16) account for 13%;
• Adults (16-64/59) account for just over half the total (59%);
• Older people (65/60+) once again account for only 7% of the total.

Table 4 - Population structure on Council sites

(July 2004) (base = 29 sites)

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