wild camping to be made illegal in the UK

[vorsprung]

Completely criminalised.

I assume this is part of the Conservative's current war on Gypsies

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/strengthening-police-powers-to-tackle-unauthorised-encampments

[Kim]

Horrible legislation, and a survey full of leading questions.  I've answered it in a fairly hard-line way, in a vague hope of cancelling out the gammons.

[hatler]

Me too. There's a Monbiot piece on it in the Grauniad.

My comment to virtually every Q was "Trespass must not be criminalised."

[bludger]

Very disappointing to see UK outdoors Facebook pages full of people saying 'we' have nothing to worry about and 'it's only to stop the p****s.' though certainly not surprising... This is the thin end of the wedge

[Jaded]

Is it the new UK, or just England and Wales out of the old UK?

[chrisbainbridge]

Just England and Wales. Scotland has right to roam

[Wowbagger]

Me too. There's a Monbiot piece on it in the Grauniad.

My comment to virtually every Q was "Trespass must not be criminalised."

I did this, and refused to tick boxes. The questions were mostly deliberately complex so that any sort of interpretation could have ben placed on my answers. I did put my name and address on the form though, so if my house is burned down some time soon, you know who is responsible.

[bludger]

I'm messaging people in the long distance/audax/bike camping/bivvying community with substantial followings asking them to publicise the consultation and my worries. Hopefully some good will come of it. I dread being woken up on the edge of a field with someone pointing a gun in my face or the police maliciously nicking me and confiscating my bike. It might sound far fetched but when you consider how vindictive so many landowners are...

[Deano]

Horrible legislation, and a survey full of leading questions.  I've answered it in a fairly hard-line way, in a vague hope of cancelling out the gammons.

Yeah, me too. Grim times if that shit passes through.

[Sergeant Pluck]

Horrible legislation, and a survey full of leading questions.

Misleading questions...

I did my best with the survey but I fear it will make little difference.

[bludger]

Horrible legislation, and a survey full of leading questions.  I've answered it in a fairly hard-line way, in a vague hope of cancelling out the gammons.

Yeah, me too. Grim times if that shit passes through.

It's been a long-term demand of the Landowners' lobby group, the CLA ( https://www.cla.org.uk/ ). They've dressed it up as a 'stop the gypsies' measure but it's nakedly the thin end of the wedge to overturn our long-held rights of way and rights to ramble. I'm unsurprised that the new Tory majority government would be eager to pass it.

[L CC]

I'm not in favour of wild camping in the UK, our country is too small and people can't be relied on not to act like dicks.

That said, this is not the right answer.

[bludger]

I appreciate that people are sometimes irresponsible but the UK isn't at all a small country, we're enormous and Scotland has had a free right to roam for years. Would you support me being arrested as a criminal for bivvying off of a bridleway for 5 hours in the middle of a 600? I don't want to be spending money booking in to hotels or campsites (which are closed half the year anyway). It's unfair.

[Kim]

I'm not in favour of wild camping in the UK, our country is too small and people can't be relied on not to act like dicks.

That said, this is not the right answer.

In this context (well, most contexts, tbh) I'd suggest that the best way to stop people acting like dicks is to deal the people who actually act like dicks, for which we'd appear to have ample laws already.

[andyoxon]

Would 'a few hours in a bivvy bag' come under 'with the purpose of residing'?

[bludger]

When someone is wanting you to get off 'their' land or otherwise just sic the police on you because they hate cyclists, that's how it would be weaponised. This is the thin end of the wedge. Or indeed a malicious prosecution could be brought against me by going through my blog, finding my photos and words about my bivvying, in order to harass and intimidate me.

[DaveReading]

What an appalling questionnaire!

I got as far as reading Q1 before the penny dropped that questions of the form

"do you agree or disagree that [the action in question] should only be made a criminal offence if it is [subject to this criterion] ?" (my emphasis)

is designed with a built-in bias, such that any answer ranging from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree" can be interpreted as the responder's implied agreement that [whatever-it-is] lies within the scope of a criminal offence at all.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Horrible legislation, and a survey full of leading questions.  I've answered it in a fairly hard-line way, in a vague hope of cancelling out the gammons.

Yeah, me too. Grim times if that shit passes through.

It's been a long-term demand of the Landowners' lobby group, the CLA ( https://www.cla.org.uk/ ). They've dressed it up as a 'stop the gypsies' measure but it's nakedly the thin end of the wedge to overturn our long-held rights of way and rights to ramble. I'm unsurprised that the new Tory majority government would be eager to pass it.

Do you know anything more about this? I couldn't find anything about it on their website, at least not that was visible to non-members beyond: https://www.cla.org.uk/advice/gn18-11-trespass-travellers-unauthorised-encampments-and-raves

Also this in the Farmer's Weekly last November:

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) has long called for the law to be amended.

As it stands at the moment, the law merely prescribes a power for the police to remove trespassers on land in specific circumstances, says CLA chief legal adviser Andrew Gillett.

“We believe the police would be encouraged to act in such matters if there was a specific offence related to the entering and occupying of land without consent,” he explains.

The CLA believes the offence could reduce the prevalence of such incidents by deterring travellers from occupying land without consent.

It says there would be greater certainty for the police, who may be encouraged to act if they understood an offence had been committed.

https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/crime/what-to-do-if-youre-a-victim-of-an-unwanted-traveller-camp

[L CC]

I think I'm bound to have more empathy than most here for the landowners point of view. I've seen first hand how easily zoonotic disease spreads, for example. Are you sure your bivvy last night didn't bring anything untoward to tonight's spot? I don't actually think we should have an automatic right of access anywhere. These people are trying to make a living out of your playground.

[bludger]

I don't see it that way at all. It is my playground. This is my country, they don't have special rights to board off huge parcels off it and make me a criminal if I want to sleep somewhere. These are hard fought for rights, back to the Tudor era where you could be branded on the face for being a 'vagrant.'

Especially since they've got the fucking cheek to be taking enormous 'farming subsidies' which come out of my payslip as they do it.

[L CC]

No, you wouldn't.
But if you grew up there, worked 7 days a week 365 days a year, see your product worth less and less each year so you have to industrialise production to make any money and still don't, are relying on subsidies and people who you think know nothing about what you do, think both that you're a sponger and that they have some god given right to access what you view as yours by birth right.
You wouldn't want bivviers in your hedgerows, either.
You don't live there, you're an unwelcome visitor.

I'm just saying that I can see why some land owners feel as they do. I don't want you camping in my garden, and I don't want you having any rights of access to my workplace, either.

[Jaded]

I appreciate that people are sometimes irresponsible but the UK isn't at all a small country, we're enormous and Scotland has had a free right to roam for years. Would you support me being arrested as a criminal for bivvying off of a bridleway for 5 hours in the middle of a 600? I don't want to be spending money booking in to hotels or campsites (which are closed half the year anyway). It's unfair.

Stuff like the NC500 is threatening the right to roam in Scotland.

Wild camping is fine if hardly anyone does it, but terrible if it is interpreted as ghastly campervans being used to avoid paying money to an area they are visiting, and blocking up passing places, spilling waste out and so on.

Things like this stop working when the numbers of people start causing damage. That’s pretty much what is beginning to happen now...

[Paul H]

Looks like a nasty piece of anti traveller legislation, but which of the proposed amendments do people fear will stop them camping overnight?

*amending section 62A of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to permit the police to direct trespassers to suitable authorised sites located in neighbouring local authority areas
*amending sections 61 and 62A of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to increase the period of time in which trespassers directed from land would be unable to return from 3 months to 12 months
*amending section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to lower the number of vehicles needing to be involved in an unauthorised encampment before police powers can be exercised from six to two or more vehicles
*amending section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to enable the police to remove trespassers from land that forms part of the highway

I've always thought the point of stealth camping* was that you weren't seen by anyone who might object and that you'd move on if asked, that's the way I've been doing it.  In about 200 nights over twenty years, the only time I've been approached by a landowner I was already packing up and although I was expecting some grief he was more interested in selling me some eggs (Which I bought even though I didn't really want them)

* I don't like to call it wild camping unless it really is.

[bludger]

No, you wouldn't.
But if you grew up there, worked 7 days a week 365 days a year, see your product worth less and less each year so you have to industrialise production to make any money and still don't, are relying on subsidies and people who you think know nothing about what you do, think both that you're a sponger and that they have some god given right to access what you view as yours by birth right.
You wouldn't want bivviers in your hedgerows, either.
You don't live there, you're an unwelcome visitor.

I'm just saying that I can see why some land owners feel as they do. I don't want you camping in my garden, and I don't want you having any rights of access to my workplace, either.

Landed people are not nobility. They don't own exclusive rights to my own country. We fought hard for our rights to roam and ramble. We were beaten, branded, imprisoned and sometimes killed. I don't care what some paper deed says, if they want to stop me sleeping somewhere while I'm out on a bike ride they can get in the sea. If they can't make it work they can give it to the national trust or the woodlands trust or whoever. This isn't the middle ages. We aren't bonded serfs living under the thumb of landowning gentry, there's a lot more of us than there are them.

[bludger]

No I'm not. They don't 'own' it any more than I do. These are the rights our ancestors fought hard for.