Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => Camping It Up => Topic started by: vorsprung on 15 January, 2020, 12:12:16 pm
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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
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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.
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Me too. There's a Monbiot piece on it in the Grauniad.
My comment to virtually every Q was "Trespass must not be criminalised."
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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
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Is it the new UK, or just England and Wales out of the old UK?
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Just England and Wales. Scotland has right to roam
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Would 'a few hours in a bivvy bag' come under 'with the purpose of residing'?
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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No I'm not. They don't 'own' it any more than I do. These are the rights our ancestors fought hard for.
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They work it. You play in it.
You might not think they have any right to own it, but in law they do, and until the revolution, that remains the case.
ETA the very fact you assume all land owners to be wealthy just demonstrates your lack of knowledge. Lots (& lots) of farmers aren't landowners, they're tenants, and they still don't necessarily want you wild camping on their land.
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They don't 'work it', they get a massive subsidy from the rest of our payslips and they spend their time drenching it in toxic chemicals, and then trying to get the government to kick them even more. I don't own them a thing. The idea that our country is some kind of inviolate cash cow you can't sleep in without paying the right people is just ludicrous. You don't own the landed spongers a penny. In fact, they owe you. 'Working' something, extracting cash from assets for your own pocket, isn't a virtue to be celebrated. It's an environmental catastrophe. The sooner they give up the game and it's given over to the likes of the national trust the better.
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No I'm not. They don't 'own' it any more than I do. These are the rights our ancestors fought hard for.
I remember a poem (not a well known one) I read as a kid that went something like:
You're on my land! Get off!
Who says it's your land?
I got it from my father.
Where did he get it from?
He got it from his father.
And where did he get it from?
He fought for it.
Well then, I'll fight you for it!
This is not a sensible solution.
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National Trust tenant farmers don't much want you wild camping on their land, either.
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TBH, I think the rights and wrongs of land ownership or wild camping as YACFers might do it[1] is a red herring. This is a nasty piece of legislation which the government are spinning as anti-Traveller (always popular with the Middle England electorate) but will doubtless be used as another stick to beat the homeless etc with, and we should oppose it on those grounds.
[1] I see little harm in a bit of bivvying under a bridge on a 600, but appreciate that nobody wants people shitting in their hedgerows or clogging the lanes with motorhomes. In this context, I'm more concerned about potentially losing access to footpaths and bridleways than a sort of camping I almost never do.
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National Trust tenant farmers don't much want you wild camping on their land, either.
not their land. And having actually been a national trust ranger for several years I can assure you that it's actually us lot who do the most wild camping and we look the other way on people doing it, too.
The national trust motto is "for ever, for everyone". Not 'fuck off landless peasant scum get off my land before I set the rozzers on you.'
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tazer in the arse for a wake-up call - yes please!
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Given you seem to think it acceptable that the richest people in the country are claiming fat subsidies at everyone else's expense, while presuming to criminalise the 99.9% for taking a sleep in a hedge, maybe it's you who needs the electrodes up the old chocolate starfish.
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I know people who have camped on National Trust land but that was back in the 1970s and they were kids. All the NT signs point out that it's illegal. Enforcement presumably varies from place to place; this was a common, the grounds of a stately home would surely be another matter and farmland, well, it's going to depend on the farmer.
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The signs (no longer there in my experience) might say one thing but the actual rangers and estate managers who forego other careers are fine with it. Indeed there is actual NT guidance on how to do it. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/wild-camping-in-the-lake-district
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How many times has Bludger now set himself up as the "us" against the "spongers", "richest" "toxic" "don't work" ... whatever other hate terms he wants to use?
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Maybe if it was you being threatened with criminalisation by landowners you'd take a bit more notice.
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Oh, I'm taking notice. I'm just also aware I'm not the Messiah or Wat Tyler, and the other guy isn't the devil incarnate.
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'Appealing for moderation' in the face of your own rights being put on a chopping block has to be the lamest excuse for a virtue that there is in the UK.
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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...
Technically there is no "right to roam" in Scotland, there is a right to responsible land access and the wild camping aspect of it specifically excludes motorised camping or campervanning, there is no right under the access legislation to just pull your campervan (or your car and tent) off the road onto a bit of land and spend the night.
The problem is that the existing legislation is not enforced.
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Agreed entirely with what you say. Also to add the law is not understood by those that pull off the road - many think they have a right to do it.
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Always thought right to roam in Scotland was specifically on foot, bike or horse, no motor vehicles. And I'm not entirely sure about the horse. Or the bike. And isn't there a regulation about camping under access rights that it has to be a minimum distance from a road and no fires?
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I think quite a lot of that is right.
Try telling the average campervan NC500er that.
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There is a right to roam in Scotland, in reality. Most RTRers are responsible and do their activities without causing problems.
The actual environmental elephant in the room in Scotland is the ruinous 'land management' by the likes of land tycoons Paul Dacre etc who have turned Scottish highland into the ecological equivalent of the surface of the moon. Illegally killing raptors ( https://www.nature.scot/snh-commissioned-report-982-analyses-fates-satellite-tracked-golden-eagles-scotland ), packing the moorland with as many grouse to shoot as they can. But of course it's not in the press because the same people who own the papers own the land. And we haven't even begun to break bread about the great dorito coloured rapist chieftan and his SSSI-devestating golf resort.
But, of course, you know, gotta prioritise those 'gypsies'. :facepalm:
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The north highlands have been changed massively, possibly forever, by the NC500. Paul Dacre slimed about long before that.
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The north highlands have been changed massively, possibly forever, by the NC500. Paul Dacre slimed about long before that.
I was afraid of this when I first heard of the NC500 - https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/may/25/dark-side-scotland-north-coast-500-route-speeding-congestion-protest (https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/may/25/dark-side-scotland-north-coast-500-route-speeding-congestion-protest)
We've spent a lot of time in the Hebrides and, even as a visitor, you get the sense that the white vans stop regardless of anyone else and tend to not spend money locally.
On the original topic, the legislation is aimed at the travelling communities. There's been emnity between the nomad and the settled since the first settler.
However, apart from being discriminatory, it's the thin end of the wedge and can only lead to more bad things. I imagine Patel loves it. As I've got older, I find myself increasingly aligned with Bludger on land ownership and rights. The law should address bad behaviour, so don't criminalise trespass, just criminal damage. That allows protection of crops and so on. You can include most of the other complaints people have about travellers too, but deal with the problem.
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Monbiot's article here. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/15/tresspass-trap-law-land-travelling-people-rights
The Tory manifesto promised to "make intentional trespass a criminal offence".
Some landowners will be pushing for further restrictions on access. Especially targetting protestors, eg Extinction Rebellion and hunt sabs.
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However, apart from being discriminatory, it's the thin end of the wedge and can only lead to more bad things. I imagine Patel loves it.
oh for sure, Gallows Priti is probably having the time of her life in the home office. I expect she'll be trying to make a move to reintroduce the hemp fandango at the next general.
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Personally, for the sensible cycling or backpacking wild camper I cannot see that this law will make one iota of difference. I state this as someone who has often wild camped and may continue to do so if my circumstances change.
I live in a rural community on a common, within a 2 miles radius I have 8 farms, 4 horse riding establishment, a stately home, 2 large country mansions, 2 historically important sites and 5 areas of common land (each as an ancient covenant which would forbid any form of camping). Never in the 20 years I have lived here have I found any objection to a passing cyclist or walker wild camping within this area.
This morning I stopped to speak to Mathew who farms less than a mile from me, his land encompasses a lake made by Capability Brown to feed the water features at Crome Court. Also Sustrans route 45, a well-used E2E route, passes within 50 yards of the lake but hidden by trees. We talked about wild campers as he said about two a year camp by the lake. He said he had no objection except he wished they would let him know they were there. Apparently, the dogs know they are there and don’t settle until he has been to look. Also if he was not aware of them, early morning he could release stock to drink at the lake and being inquisitive they could cause damage or injury to anyone camping there.
As for the suggestion that they could be confronted by a landowner with a loaded shotgun is just plain silly. No registered owner of a shotgun would dare risk pointing a loaded weapon at another human being in a threatening manner.
On the other side of the topic, in a village near to me travellers broke into a children’s sports field and playground. In five days they caused £57,000 worth of damage including: Completely wrecking the entrance gate which also served as a disabled entrance. Ruining the grass playing area by racing quad bikes around the field. Leaving vast amount of rubbish and scrap metal behind. And worst of all using the artificial turfed tennis court as a toilet. This meant the whole area was out of bounds for the children and disabled of the area for almost a year. If this new law prevents this behaviour then I for one am in favour, even at the risk of curtailing some wild camping, which I doubt will happen.
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Shall we just say that vandals did that and not denigrate the entire traveller community by association?
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They still regard themselves as members of the travellers community when it suits them.
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Never in the 20 years I have lived here have I found any objection to a passing cyclist or walker wild camping within this area.
So what reason is there to criminalise them?
As for the suggestion that they could be confronted by a landowner with a loaded shotgun is just plain silly. No registered owner of a shotgun would dare risk pointing a loaded weapon at another human being in a threatening manner.
This is just outright factually wrong. Gun owners in this country and others have used weapons to intimidate, such as when Nigel Cox walked up to a minivan with hunt saboteurs and opened fire into the bonnet. He got a 3 year suspended sentence and a fine. Last year armed hunters digging up fox holes fired shotguns at a drone being used by hunt sabs ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiZRZXaIod4 ). See https://www.wildlifeguardian.co.uk/hunting/hunt-convictions/ for a more full list of instances of guns, whips, horses and knives being used to assault and intimidate. See also in the USA where people who are 'trespassing' are routinely threatened with guns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27K2kWq-jT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViDjt7Y379k
This criminalisation of us changes the game immediately. Gun owners will be able to tell the court that they 'felt threatened by criminal trespassers' and bore firearms for their own defence. This is a radical change in the law which affects all of us. I don't want anyone walking up on me with a gun that is clearly being borne in order to cause fear and to intimidate, let alone pointed at me.
If this new law prevents this behaviour
That behaviour is already against the law. This is exactly the idea of this ghastly 'consultation', to use the guise of 'stopping the travellers' to criminalise what we've all been doing for decades. It's the thin end of the wedge, leveraging bigotry towards travellers.
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Yeah I've had a shotgun fired over my head (probably well well over but still) back when I was about twelve and then been chased by the farmer in his pickup truck.
My crime, cutting the corner of a field on our bikes (not a crop field and had bridleway along the two sides we connected anyway) and then cycling along a paved road that was officially footpath (and farmer's pickup truck) only. Apparently we were going to cause damage somehow.
Now I'm not saying we were in the right but rather a disproportionate response.
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It's about power and privilege, and you can look forward to a lot more of that kind of behaviour if this goes through. People getting a rush out of causing fear and terror from those taking leisure their own country. No different from the 'dangerous bull in field' signs you sometimes come across, put up specifically to intimidate.
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That behaviour is already against the law. This is exactly the idea of this ghastly 'consultation', to use the guise of 'stopping the travellers' to criminalise what we've all been doing for decades. It's the thin end of the wedge, leveraging bigotry towards travellers.
Yeah but not everyone follows the law.
It's not pragmatically effective to enforce, for example, littering a field, as you need to prove who did it and even if you can do that the sentence might only be a fine which wouldn't get paid.
The difference between the proposed law and the existing law, is the proposed new law allows for prevention rather than cure.
(bikepacker's post sums up my feelings (and the truth of the situation) exactly, probably better expressed than I would)
Never in the 20 years I have lived here have I found any objection to a passing cyclist or walker wild camping within this area.
So what reason is there to criminalise them?
The point is to give the law sufficient teeth to make it effective.
In order to do that you may sometimes need to give it more teeth than it needs for all situations.
You appear to want the law to be hamstrung for fear it will be used incorrectly, and if anyone has their land ruined because of it, well tough - they probably deserve it for being "rich" enough to own the land in the first place. :facepalm:
This is a radical change in the law which affects all of us. I don't want anyone walking up on me with a gun that is clearly being borne in order to cause fear and to intimidate, let alone pointed at me.
I think put simply you don't really have to worry about that if you aren't intending to be antagonistic or confrontational towards anyone or damage their property. If you're very worried about that you may have to ask whether that is your intention.
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The point is to give the law sufficient teeth to make it effective.
I'm sorry but if you think that lobbyists to criminalise 'trespassers' (and if you want to sleep for 4-5 hours somewhere off a road in England, that's going to be you) are doing it out of environmental concerns, I have a bridge to sell you. This is about enhancing their powers and privileges over the rest of us landless vagrants. The reason no one has bothered with this rot until we got this awful new government run by ghastly sociopaths is that it is completely unnecessary and out of proportion. The landowners want to be kept given their subsidies that come out from my pay packet, while being able to criminalise me for sleeping in a field for a few hours. It's outrageous.
You appear to want the law to be hamstrung for fear it will be used incorrectly
No, I want to be protected from criminalisation and intimidation by armed landowners who hate people on 'their' land. Somehow my National Trust ranger colleagues didn't feel that 'trespassers' needed to be criminalised to keep their estates safe from spoilage. This is a spurious argument made up as a thin end of the wedge to curtail everyone's rights to the countryside.
"If you're doing nothing wrong, you've nothing to fear!"
Factually wrong. The hunt sabs weren't breaking the law when the gun owner blasted their minivan while they were sat inside. You are breathtakingly naive. People hate 'trespassers' and cyclists particularly. Talk to enough people who've done long night time audaxes and they'll tell you stories about being threatened and intimidated for having done nothing wrong. I met someone who was dragged over to the side of the road by a policeman who lectured him for 30 minutes, as he shivered. You give an inch to any angle which can be used to persecute a cyclist or a rambler, and they'll take a yard. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/233644.stm https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/nov/21/jamiewilson
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We are discussing wild camping for perhaps just for one night in a quiet location. In that case I still stand by my earlier remarks regarding shotguns being fired at a human being.
Yes in the heat of hunt or similar situation they have been known to be fired at an inanimate object or into the air. I have been on a few hunt protests also protests against game shooting seen how situations can flare up and have also been threatened but never had live weapon pointed at me.
One extra thing Mathew stated this morning: Why would anyone wild camp when less that a mile away is a nice small campsite that charges £3 a night including shower and toilet facilities for backpackers and solo cycle-campers?
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Shall we just say that vandals did that and not denigrate the entire traveller community by association?
The vandals in this case were travellers, so why not say so?
The destruction described by bikepacker is a refection of what repeatedly happens up and down the country, and the perpetrators readily self-identify as travellers. To try and deny either the destruction, trauma, cost and nuisance, or to avoid calling the culprits out, is a dangerous path to tread IMO.
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One extra thing Mathew stated this morning: Why would anyone wild camp when less that a mile away is a nice small campsite that charges £3 a night including shower and toilet facilities for backpackers and solo cycle-campers?
It is as simple as this: I don't want to. I don't have to pay up to sleep in my own country, or book ahead for the privilege. If I want to stop at 0130 in the morning for just a few hours in the middle of an audax then I'll do that. That's part of what I love about cycling.
The destruction described by bikepacker is a refection of what repeatedly happens up and down the country
This claim is completely out of proportion.
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The destruction described by bikepacker is a refection of what repeatedly happens up and down the country
This claim is completely out of proportion.
The 2 areas of the country I am familiar with - Bath (Avon) and Montrose (Angus) have both had travellers illegally pitching and causing damage and nuisance in the last few weeks, in both cases to public infrastructure (a park-and-ride site and a public links golf course).
Are you claiming that these are isolated incidents?
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Yes. It's no different to the 'scourge of the streets' hysteria. If only half as much attention was given to the environmental devastation wrought by the private 'land managers' across the country.
It's not 'gypsies', for example, who are accelerating the country towards eradication of its topsoil within half a decade ( https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/24/uk-30-40-years-away-eradication-soil-fertility-warns-michael-gove ). This is a side show at best.
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Personally, for the sensible cycling or backpacking wild camper I cannot see that this law will make one iota of difference. I state this as someone who has often wild camped and may continue to do so if my circumstances change.
I expect it helps to be a nice white middle class outdoorsy person on an adventure, rather than coming across as homeless, or the wrong kind of FOREIGN. And then there's the attitude test.
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You can label me however you wish it is of no consequence to me as you know so little about me. Try that for an attitude test.
I will go back to the topic of wild camping and state over the last 20 years I have spent more nights in a tent on cycle tours than most on this forum, so I think that qualifies me to have a say.
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You can label me however you wish it is of no consequence to me as you know so little about me. Try that for an attitude test.
It's not about me labelling you (FWIW I was thinking of myself), it's about the land owner/tenant/caretaker/whatever or law enforcement person's first impression of the unexpected camper they come across. Some people are going to get more benefit of the doubt than others.
I recall turning up unannounced at a small Dutch campsite. The owner wasn't on-site at the time, but there were empty pitches, and one of the other campers phoned them for us. He turned up a few minutes later, obviously flustered, and expressed his relief that the "two English people on bikes" were evidently cycle tourists, and not an advance scout party for Irish travellers, which he (or some associate, I can't remember) had previously had some kind of problem with. I expect this relief and subsequent helpfulness would have been less forthcoming if we'd been on BSOs, wearing scruffy clothing rather than cycling kit, and less polite about the possibility of not being allowed to stay.
Our experiences of random strangers aren't universal, because they're inherently influenced by our appearance and demeanour. There's no reason that interactions with land owners while wild camping are going to be any different in this respect than those with service providers, officials, oiks, and so on.
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Food for thought that being presumed to be a white middle class male (by far the predominant demographic among UK leisure cyclists - and it includes me) is taken as a slight, but denigrating 'gypsies' as an urgent criminal element doesn't seem to be raising any eyebrows...
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Shall we just say that vandals did that and not denigrate the entire traveller community by association?
The vandals in this case were travellers, so why not say so
Because it draws attention away from their action to their 'group membership' and attaches the crime to that. Just like you never hear of 'a motorist' driving through a red light, it's always 'John Smith' but 'a cyclist' if it's someone on a bike.
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Shall we just say that vandals did that and not denigrate the entire traveller community by association?
The vandals in this case were travellers, so why not say so
Because it draws attention away from their action to their 'group membership' and attaches the crime to that. Just like you never hear of 'a motorist' driving through a red light, it's always 'John Smith' but 'a cyclist' if it's someone on a bike.
Because in this case the "travelling" is the heart of the matter - it's not an incidental or coincidental identifier.
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We can debate labels and if or not we should identify any group with a collective label. But the reality of the situation is; those in caravan conveys that go on to property and create the vandalism, label themselves as 'travellers'.
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You’re trying to use the assertion “all of this damage is caused by travellers” to claim “all travellers are collectively responsible for this damage”.
Yet your supporting a change in law that cracks down on all travellers and likely has significant collateral damage to other people too.
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Shall we just say that vandals did that and not denigrate the entire traveller community by association?
The vandals in this case were travellers, so why not say so
Because it draws attention away from their action to their 'group membership' and attaches the crime to that. Just like you never hear of 'a motorist' driving through a red light, it's always 'John Smith' but 'a cyclist' if it's someone on a bike.
(Leaving aside the original question of whether this proposed legislation is actually targetting travellers, wild campers or someone/thing else.)
Because in this case the "travelling" is the heart of the matter - it's not an incidental or coincidental identifier.
In which case we're going about this from the wrong end. Why do travellers cause damage and what steps can be taken to enable travelling communities to travel in harmony with the settled communities they pass through?
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Some people are going to get more benefit of the doubt than others.
Absolutely. I suspect people who treat privately owned land as public property are not going to be given much benefit, even before white & middle class starts getting applied.
This appears to be the fundamentals of bludgers point, they feel entitled. We should all know how that culture of entitlement makes use of the public highway feel, and I'm not sure there's much empathy for other land users going on from bludger.
Vandals are undoubtedly a subset of travellers. Litterers are unfortunately a subset of cyclists, and walkers. As a minority group, we ought to have empathy. As human beings, we should. And that means people trying to live their lives, however much you disapprove of how they do it. Antagonism and group think should always be challenged.
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Shall we just say that vandals did that and not denigrate the entire traveller community by association?
The vandals in this case were travellers, so why not say so
Because it draws attention away from their action to their 'group membership' and attaches the crime to that. Just like you never hear of 'a motorist' driving through a red light, it's always 'John Smith' but 'a cyclist' if it's someone on a bike.
(Leaving aside the original question of whether this proposed legislation is actually targetting travellers, wild campers or someone/thing else.)
Because in this case the "travelling" is the heart of the matter - it's not an incidental or coincidental identifier.
In which case we're going about this from the wrong end. Why do travellers cause damage and what steps can be taken to enable travelling communities to travel in harmony with the settled communities they pass through?
Have you considered the possibility that some elements of the traveller community don't want to "to travel in harmony with the settled communities", but would rather exploit society in any and every way possible, whether that be intimidating OAP's to have their drives re-tarmaced, fly-tipping residential waste, intimidating local communities with anti-social behaviour, avoiding paying taxes and generally sticking 2 fingers up to society, who they see not as the oppressor but as the gullible victim.
That being the case, any attempt at accommodation is likely to be futile and legislation is the obvious solution. It really is self-inflicted.
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Have you considered the possibility that some elements of the traveller community don't want to "to travel in harmony with the settled communities", but would rather exploit society in any and every way possible
Just like some elements of the settled community, then.
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This appears to be the fundamentals of bludgers point, they feel entitled. We should all know how that culture of entitlement makes use of the public highway feel, and I'm not sure there's much empathy for other land users going on from bludger.
We are entitled. Cyclists have fought very hard to protect their entitlement to use the public highway, in the face of lobbyists who aggressively want us 'off the road.' Our forebears have been maimed, killed and locked up to win that entitlement and we would be fools to think it safe.
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Shall we just say that vandals did that and not denigrate the entire traveller community by association?
The vandals in this case were travellers, so why not say so
Because it draws attention away from their action to their 'group membership' and attaches the crime to that. Just like you never hear of 'a motorist' driving through a red light, it's always 'John Smith' but 'a cyclist' if it's someone on a bike.
(Leaving aside the original question of whether this proposed legislation is actually targetting travellers, wild campers or someone/thing else.)
Because in this case the "travelling" is the heart of the matter - it's not an incidental or coincidental identifier.
In which case we're going about this from the wrong end. Why do travellers cause damage and what steps can be taken to enable travelling communities to travel in harmony with the settled communities they pass through?
Have you considered the possibility that some elements of the traveller community don't want to "to travel in harmony with the settled communities", but would rather exploit society in any and every way possible, whether that be intimidating OAP's to have their drives re-tarmaced, fly-tipping residential waste, intimidating local communities with anti-social behaviour, avoiding paying taxes and generally sticking 2 fingers up to society, who they see not as the oppressor but as the gullible victim.
That being the case, any attempt at accommodation is likely to be futile and legislation is the obvious solution. It really is self-inflicted.
Yes. That's what I think is the case. Which is why I don't think it's "the heart of the matter" that they're travellers; the heart of the matter is what they do. It's dangerous to tar all travellers with the same brush just as it's dangerous to do the same with residents of a particular place.
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Shall we just say that vandals did that and not denigrate the entire traveller community by association?
And even that existing laws that criminalise trespass with associated (criminal) damage are already there to deal with that sort of behaviour.
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Now we know what Bloody Stupid Johnson means by one nation.
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England. With some Wales if they aren’t difficult.
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I think quite a lot of that is right.
Try telling the average campervan NC500er that.
The Road Traffic Act applies to anything that looks or smells like a road (unless provided for the sole access to a property) in Scotland regardless of ownership.
It also applies to any land within something like 200m of a road, but it's also illegal to drive on a non-road without the landowners permission.
The concept of Trespass in Scotland requires access to be explicitly prohibited, so driving on a road that is not on the councils adoption list is normally legit.
The Land access reform that's commonly known as "Right to Roam" applies to any land that is not a road, is not set out for the purposes of sport (MTB trails, Ski Pistes etc), is not enclosed for a specific purpose (e.g. sports grounds), hasn't got a temporary exclusion notice posted and is not "Curtilage" (which is basically a reasonable area around a property where privacy is to be expected).
It applies a right to responsible access to land for almost all non-motorized activities.
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Does the average person know/understand the nuances?
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Does the average person know/understand the nuances?
Dinnae be daft, the change in legislation hardly changed peoples behaviour from before... but then the whole point of it was to start from what we did anyway and liberalise further.
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I like this from bearbones https://bearbonesbikepacking.blogspot.com/2015/04/food-for-thought-just-resting-my-eyes.html (https://bearbonesbikepacking.blogspot.com/2015/04/food-for-thought-just-resting-my-eyes.html)
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(From what I have seen) The average motorised person considers the legislation to apply to their rights. They don’t not park somewhere and walk 200m with a tent and shit. They just pull in and stay and shit.
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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.
If that is what the proposal are then it sounds good to me, something needs to change.
As a hill walker I too have been an avid wild camper for decades, I doubt very few people have ever seen me as it is always very remote, mostly up in the tops and little longer than dusk till dawn, I leave as small a footprint as possible.
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(From what I have seen) The average motorised person considers the legislation to apply to their rights. They don’t not park somewhere and walk 200m with a tent and shit. They just pull in and stay and shit.
yes, before the legislation came in people parked half on the road, half on the loch side along the A85 at Loch Earn anyway.
They still do it...
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They do it in far greater numbers now.
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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
We would like to consult on measures to criminalise the act of trespassing when setting up an unauthorised encampment in England and Wales.
We would also like to consult on what an alternative approach to this could be: ...
[amendments listed]
The four amendments are the milder alternative, not the main proposal.
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By voting for the Tories, the proles have unwittingly enabled them to roll back hundreds of years of history. The serfs will soon be tugging their forelocks to their betters again.
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It might be worth pointing out that not everyone who lives in a vehicle or a tent is a traveller. There are certain streets in Bristol, and I'm sure it's the same in every big city and some not so big ones, with inhabited camper vans, converted buses and so on permanently (or would be permanently if they didn't occasionally get moved on) parked on them. I haven't heard reports of crime and destruction associated with these but it still causes problems, most obviously with rubbish and drains. But the point is that the people living in them aren't Gypsies, New Age travellers or even moving their vehicles, they're people who'd like to live in a house but can't afford to. The same, more dramatically, with all the tents in the corners of parks.
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There are lots of narrowboats moored along the canals of London, occupied by people who cannot afford a house.
The late Jo Cox lived on a narrowboat in the Hackney area and she cycled to parliament every day.
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Does anyone know what this would mean for long term protest sites, or other protests? E.g. the peace camp next to the nuclear subs in Helensburgh, or XR occupying parts of London? I haven't read all of the consultation yet (have you?), but I got the impression that even being on the public road would fall under this change.
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It potentially means that all protesters on 'private' land become criminals.
By voting for the Tories, the proles have unwittingly enabled them to roll back hundreds of years of history. The serfs will soon be tugging their forelocks to their betters again.
The people will have an awful long time to regret their fit of pique.
I expect the c21 equivalent of the Enabling Act of 1933 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933) to raise it's ugly head before too long.
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Does anyone know what this would mean for long term protest sites, or other protests? E.g. the peace camp next to the nuclear subs in Helensburgh, or XR occupying parts of London? I haven't read all of the consultation yet (have you?), but I got the impression that even being on the public road would fall under this change.
In general UK law is not retroactive, so as the protest started before any new law comes into effect, this would be allowed to continue. See the fun uk.gov had trying to get Brian Haw to stop...
J
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There are lots of narrowboats moored along the canals of London, occupied by people who cannot afford a house.
I forgot about those. Inexcusably, as there are lots of boat-dwellers in Bristol docks. However, does it count as camping? Or trespass?
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Does anyone know what this would mean for long term protest sites, or other protests? E.g. the peace camp next to the nuclear subs in Helensburgh, or XR occupying parts of London? I haven't read all of the consultation yet (have you?), but I got the impression that even being on the public road would fall under this change.
Perhaps this is the real interest of the legislation?
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There are lots of narrowboats moored along the canals of London, occupied by people who cannot afford a house.
Also people who can't cope with a house. SIL has previously lived in vehicles, boats, caves, etc, although is now sleeping on the streets, in spite of having a house provided by social services. The police generally appreciate that she's mentally ill, but the last thing people like her need is to be more illegal.
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There are lots of narrowboats moored along the canals of London, occupied by people who cannot afford a house.
I forgot about those. Inexcusably, as there are lots of boat-dwellers in Bristol docks. However, does it count as camping? Or trespass?
The canal boat dwellers live in boats licenced by The Canal and River Trust mostly on approved moorings, so there isn't an issue there.
CRT have, in recent years, taken a very hard, and in some quarters controversial, line with unlicensed boats, and also with unapproved moorings particularly in London. It's a whole different can of worms.
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One of my mates lives on a boat. She has to move it fortnightly to comply with the rules.
This can lead to interesting situations where you come back from somewhere and realise you forgot where you parked it, and you have to ride up and down the towpath with a headtorch on looking for your own home.
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It's as if the Bristol Post reads YACF!
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/local-news/river-avon-boaters-told-leave-3762887
Live-aboard boaters being moved on from official moorings due to riverbank collapse.
Laura Darling told cabinet members she was evicted from Saltford marina after she fell pregnant and Moor Lane is one of the few safe and accessible areas for her and five-year-old son.
“People will have to tie their boats to random trees if the moorings are taken away, with no access to hospitals,” she said. “The most vulnerable would suffer.”
Alice Young, a live-aboard boater who runs the boater outreach service for Julian House, said Mead Lane is a vital lifeline, adding: “I’m genuinely concerned from a professional stance where these people will go.
“People are going to put themselves at risk tying to trees in unsuitable river conditions.
“It would inflame the tensions that already exist. It would cost the council a huge amount of money. We already have ridiculous waiting lists for housing.”
But Mead Lane homeowner Peter Denmead said allowing mooring on the fragile riverbank was reckless, and claimed there are plenty of other sites along the Kennet and Avon canal.
“We urge members to take urgent action to avoid this serious environmental risk,” he added.
Julian House is a local charity for homeless people.
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The title seems a little misleading. Trespass is a criminal offence in Scotland but rights to roam and wild camp are more generous than in the rest of the U.K. where trespass is mainly a civil matter.
Reducing the number of vehicles from 6 to 2 in the definition of an encampment will not affect my audaxing or other wild camping. In fact in Scotland where wild camping is allowed it is part of the rights to roam which excludes vehicles.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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The title is not misleading. It is the government documents which are misleading. The newly majority-endowed Boris has not appointed Gallows Priti to 'protect the environment', this is the thin end of the wedge to go back to the bad old days of gamekeepers assaulting "trespassers" on our own countryside, and then banging the "trespassers" up in jail just like they did the Kinder Scout hikers. The guff in the document is a smokescreen to get that through into law.
IMPORTANT READING
https://off.road.cc/content/news/criminalising-wild-camping-new-government-proposals-to-make-trespass-a-criminal-offence
We contacted Cycling UK, who had this to say: "If we are to take the promise made in the Conservative Manifesto on face value, then Cycling UK is very concerned about the potential to criminalise many of the off-road community, given that from our Rides of Way report we know about a third of riders don’t know the status of the trail they’re on. That’s a lot of people who might become lawbreakers, due to an inadequate antiquated system and could do a lot to prevent people from even taking their first trips out onto the trails.
"Once we’ve looked into the consultation, Cycling UK intends to respond, and we will make the point trespass should not be criminalised more generally, and call for the guidance to be made clearer particularly in regards to rights of way.
"One area which will be of particular concern to wild camping and bikepacking community is the lack of clarity over Government’s definition of “reside”. There’s nothing to suggest this is for one or two nights or longer. We’ll also be looking to clarify this point."
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I find it slightly at odds that they want to criminalise hundreds of years of perfectly adequate civil trespass laws yet decriminalise tv licence fee evasion.
One might consider if one was so inclined that there might be a far right, fascist, intolerant, controlling agenda underpinning these actions.
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Where's the like button...
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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.
While I don't really agree with fboab, your words here are not proportionate.
Would you really accept someone setting up a tent in your garden (without asking you)? In your house? What about in front of your car, on the driveway?
The 'us' you are talking about is every person who owns a property. Any house with a patch of green, a yard outside.
The right to roam is a right to use footpaths, bridleways; it isn't a right to enter any property, anywhere and cause a nuisance. You are talking as if your wanting to enjoy a bike ride trumps someone else's need to make a living.
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The title seems a little misleading. Trespass is a criminal offence in Scotland but rights to roam and wild camp are more generous than in the rest of the U.K. where trespass is mainly a civil matter.
Reducing the number of vehicles from 6 to 2 in the definition of an encampment will not affect my audaxing or other wild camping. In fact in Scotland where wild camping is allowed it is part of the rights to roam which excludes vehicles.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
In both England/Wales and Scotland, trespass is primarily a civil matter but can constitute a criminal matter. In Scotland, it is harder to establish the civil offence given the 'right to roam'.
This isn't about outlawing trespass or wild camping. This is about a right wing, racist government targeting - at the behest of their financiers - a vulnerable ethnic minority. Ramblers, cyclists and wild campers are just 'acceptable collateral damage' in the eyes of the Tory party and those pushing the anti-Gypsy and traveller agenda.
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While I don't really agree with fboab, your words here are not proportionate.
Would you really accept someone setting up a tent in your garden (without asking you)? In your house? What about in front of your car, on the driveway?
This isn't about front gardens (which I don't own anyway), it's about hundreds of acres of land at a time. The idea that you should be made a criminal for wanting a sleep in your own country is just ludicrous. Especially from a government which's members are coke-snorting, restaurant-vandalising goons.
The 'us' you are talking about is every person who owns a property. Any house with a patch of green, a yard outside.
It really isn't. Don't buy the landed Range Rover driver's propaganda that 'they'll be camping in your garden next!!!', it's hokum.
The right to roam is a right to use footpaths, bridleways; it isn't a right to enter any property, anywhere and cause a nuisance. You are talking as if your wanting to enjoy a bike ride trumps someone else's need to make a living.
No. My right to enjoy cycling does trump someone else's dreams of being Landed Laird of the Grouse Moor though. Bivvying in the corner of a field is not 'entering property and causing a nuisance', people have been doing it for years and somehow there don't seem to have been mass devastation of rural England.
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The title seems a little misleading. Trespass is a criminal offence in Scotland but rights to roam and wild camp are more generous than in the rest of the U.K. where trespass is mainly a civil matter.
Reducing the number of vehicles from 6 to 2 in the definition of an encampment will not affect my audaxing or other wild camping. In fact in Scotland where wild camping is allowed it is part of the rights to roam which excludes vehicles.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
In both England/Wales and Scotland, trespass is primarily a civil matter but can constitute a criminal matter. In Scotland, it is harder to establish the civil offence given the 'right to roam'.
This isn't about outlawing trespass or wild camping. This is about a right wing, racist government targeting - at the behest of their financiers - a vulnerable ethnic minority. Ramblers, cyclists and wild campers are just 'acceptable collateral damage' in the eyes of the Tory party and those pushing the anti-Gypsy and traveller agenda.
Or is it using Gypsies and Travellers as the publicly acceptable lever to criminalise protests such as XR and Occupy? They're probably more numerous and annoying to 'the establishment' than travellers. Or the tented and caravanned homeless, who must be more numerous than both travellers and protesters put together? Whatever the actual target, collateral damage also gets hit and hurt.
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Any other Cycling UK members on YACF will note the concerns CUK express about how the 'reforms' are the thin end of the wedge to criminalise 'trespassing' MTBers.
(https://i.imgur.com/5MzySwa.png)
https://www.cyclinguk.org/newsletter/cycle-campaign-news-january-2020
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The title seems a little misleading. Trespass is a criminal offence in Scotland but rights to roam and wild camp are more generous than in the rest of the U.K. where trespass is mainly a civil matter.
Reducing the number of vehicles from 6 to 2 in the definition of an encampment will not affect my audaxing or other wild camping. In fact in Scotland where wild camping is allowed it is part of the rights to roam which excludes vehicles.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
In both England/Wales and Scotland, trespass is primarily a civil matter but can constitute a criminal matter. In Scotland, it is harder to establish the civil offence given the 'right to roam'.
This isn't about outlawing trespass or wild camping. This is about a right wing, racist government targeting - at the behest of their financiers - a vulnerable ethnic minority. Ramblers, cyclists and wild campers are just 'acceptable collateral damage' in the eyes of the Tory party and those pushing the anti-Gypsy and traveller agenda.
I disagree. Trespass is different in Scotland and has been primarily a criminal offence since Victoria was on the throne. The rights in the right to roam brought in 2003 are quite explicit exemptions from that 1865 law. If you put up a tent in someone’s back garden without their permission in Scotland you are committing a crime of trespass but not so in England and Wales, where it is a civil matter. Personally I think the Scottish set up is better for the modern world.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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The title seems a little misleading. Trespass is a criminal offence in Scotland but rights to roam and wild camp are more generous than in the rest of the U.K. where trespass is mainly a civil matter.
Reducing the number of vehicles from 6 to 2 in the definition of an encampment will not affect my audaxing or other wild camping. In fact in Scotland where wild camping is allowed it is part of the rights to roam which excludes vehicles.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
In both England/Wales and Scotland, trespass is primarily a civil matter but can constitute a criminal matter. In Scotland, it is harder to establish the civil offence given the 'right to roam'.
This isn't about outlawing trespass or wild camping. This is about a right wing, racist government targeting - at the behest of their financiers - a vulnerable ethnic minority. Ramblers, cyclists and wild campers are just 'acceptable collateral damage' in the eyes of the Tory party and those pushing the anti-Gypsy and traveller agenda.
I disagree. Trespass is different in Scotland and has been primarily a criminal offence since Victoria was on the throne. The rights in the right to roam brought in 2003 are quite explicit exemptions from that 1865 law. If you put up a tent in someone’s back garden without their permission in Scotland you are committing a crime of trespass but not so in England and Wales, where it is a civil matter. Personally I think the Scottish set up is better for the modern world.
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Sorry - you're wrong. Trespass is a primarily a civil act in Scotland (a delict). The 1865 Act only applies when someone lodges in premises, occupies or encamps on private property.
If you put up a tent in someones back garden in England (and Wales) then you can be prosecuted under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.
One thing local councillors learn very quickly is the law around trespass...
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The title seems a little misleading. Trespass is a criminal offence in Scotland but rights to roam and wild camp are more generous than in the rest of the U.K. where trespass is mainly a civil matter.
Reducing the number of vehicles from 6 to 2 in the definition of an encampment will not affect my audaxing or other wild camping. In fact in Scotland where wild camping is allowed it is part of the rights to roam which excludes vehicles.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
In both England/Wales and Scotland, trespass is primarily a civil matter but can constitute a criminal matter. In Scotland, it is harder to establish the civil offence given the 'right to roam'.
This isn't about outlawing trespass or wild camping. This is about a right wing, racist government targeting - at the behest of their financiers - a vulnerable ethnic minority. Ramblers, cyclists and wild campers are just 'acceptable collateral damage' in the eyes of the Tory party and those pushing the anti-Gypsy and traveller agenda.
Or is it using Gypsies and Travellers as the publicly acceptable lever to criminalise protests such as XR and Occupy? They're probably more numerous and annoying to 'the establishment' than travellers. Or the tented and caravanned homeless, who must be more numerous than both travellers and protesters put together? Whatever the actual target, collateral damage also gets hit and hurt.
Rough sleepers is under 5000 per night and that includes those rough sleeping in tents. Gypsy and travellers estimates are up to 300,000. Don’t know about protesters numbers.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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The title seems a little misleading. Trespass is a criminal offence in Scotland but rights to roam and wild camp are more generous than in the rest of the U.K. where trespass is mainly a civil matter.
Reducing the number of vehicles from 6 to 2 in the definition of an encampment will not affect my audaxing or other wild camping. In fact in Scotland where wild camping is allowed it is part of the rights to roam which excludes vehicles.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
In both England/Wales and Scotland, trespass is primarily a civil matter but can constitute a criminal matter. In Scotland, it is harder to establish the civil offence given the 'right to roam'.
This isn't about outlawing trespass or wild camping. This is about a right wing, racist government targeting - at the behest of their financiers - a vulnerable ethnic minority. Ramblers, cyclists and wild campers are just 'acceptable collateral damage' in the eyes of the Tory party and those pushing the anti-Gypsy and traveller agenda.
I disagree. Trespass is different in Scotland and has been primarily a criminal offence since Victoria was on the throne. The rights in the right to roam brought in 2003 are quite explicit exemptions from that 1865 law. If you put up a tent in someone’s back garden without their permission in Scotland you are committing a crime of trespass but not so in England and Wales, where it is a civil matter. Personally I think the Scottish set up is better for the modern world.
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Sorry - you're wrong. Trespass is a primarily a civil act in Scotland (a delict). The 1865 Act only applies when someone lodges in premises, occupies or encamps on private property.
If you put up a tent in someones back garden in England (and Wales) then you can be prosecuted under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.
One thing local councillors learn very quickly is the law around trespass...
“Encamps on private property” I would have thought covered the example I gave camping in a back garden as criminal trespass in scotland. With regard to CJPO 1994 does this really apply to my example of an individual in a tent without a motor vehicle ? (and of so why are they proposing to change it from 6 vehicles to 2 if none are needed?) but if sounds like you know more about it than me so perhaps I have overlooked something.
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The title seems a little misleading. Trespass is a criminal offence in Scotland but rights to roam and wild camp are more generous than in the rest of the U.K. where trespass is mainly a civil matter.
Reducing the number of vehicles from 6 to 2 in the definition of an encampment will not affect my audaxing or other wild camping. In fact in Scotland where wild camping is allowed it is part of the rights to roam which excludes vehicles.
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In both England/Wales and Scotland, trespass is primarily a civil matter but can constitute a criminal matter. In Scotland, it is harder to establish the civil offence given the 'right to roam'.
This isn't about outlawing trespass or wild camping. This is about a right wing, racist government targeting - at the behest of their financiers - a vulnerable ethnic minority. Ramblers, cyclists and wild campers are just 'acceptable collateral damage' in the eyes of the Tory party and those pushing the anti-Gypsy and traveller agenda.
Or is it using Gypsies and Travellers as the publicly acceptable lever to criminalise protests such as XR and Occupy? They're probably more numerous and annoying to 'the establishment' than travellers. Or the tented and caravanned homeless, who must be more numerous than both travellers and protesters put together? Whatever the actual target, collateral damage also gets hit and hurt.
Rough sleepers is under 5000 per night and that includes those rough sleeping in tents. Gypsy and travellers estimates are up to 300,000. Don’t know about protesters numbers.
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Where did you find those figures? Not disputing them, just mildly surprised – but I'd imagine both vary in concentration from place to place and living in central Bristol, I probably see more than my fair share of rough sleepers. (And for some reason, there are certain places in Warwickshire where I seem to always see "old-fashioned gypsies" with horse-drawn caravans, but those are places I only ride through a couple of times a year.)
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The title seems a little misleading. Trespass is a criminal offence in Scotland but rights to roam and wild camp are more generous than in the rest of the U.K. where trespass is mainly a civil matter.
Reducing the number of vehicles from 6 to 2 in the definition of an encampment will not affect my audaxing or other wild camping. In fact in Scotland where wild camping is allowed it is part of the rights to roam which excludes vehicles.
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In both England/Wales and Scotland, trespass is primarily a civil matter but can constitute a criminal matter. In Scotland, it is harder to establish the civil offence given the 'right to roam'.
This isn't about outlawing trespass or wild camping. This is about a right wing, racist government targeting - at the behest of their financiers - a vulnerable ethnic minority. Ramblers, cyclists and wild campers are just 'acceptable collateral damage' in the eyes of the Tory party and those pushing the anti-Gypsy and traveller agenda.
Or is it using Gypsies and Travellers as the publicly acceptable lever to criminalise protests such as XR and Occupy? They're probably more numerous and annoying to 'the establishment' than travellers. Or the tented and caravanned homeless, who must be more numerous than both travellers and protesters put together? Whatever the actual target, collateral damage also gets hit and hurt.
Rough sleepers is under 5000 per night and that includes those rough sleeping in tents. Gypsy and travellers estimates are up to 300,000. Don’t know about protesters numbers.
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Where did you find those figures? Not disputing them, just mildly surprised – but I'd imagine both vary in concentration from place to place and living in central Bristol, I probably see more than my fair share of rough sleepers. (And for some reason, there are certain places in Warwickshire where I seem to always see "old-fashioned gypsies" with horse-drawn caravans, but those are places I only ride through a couple of times a year.)
The rough sleeper figures appear to be from the official 'count'. Which is a one off count one night each year - or in many cases, the councils don't even go out and count... they estimate.
The official figures are generally regarded as unreliable and as grossly undercounting/estimating the number of rough sleepers. For example, the CHAIN figures suggest that there are around 5,000 rough sleepers in London alone.
As for the gypsy/traveller figures, figures vary. The census had 63,000, but this is accepted as a gross undercount. I think it's generally accepted that there are 200,000 - 300,00 Gypsy/travellers in the UK and up to another 200,00 Roma. The majority of these are settled.
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Google !
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/781567/Rough_Sleeping_Statistics_2018_release.pdf
And....
The latest national census conducted in 2011 estimates that there are 57 680 Gypsy Travellers in England and Wales.24 However, estimates from health studies and other government reports suggest that between 90 000 and 120 000 Gypsy Travellers live a mobile lifestyle with a similar number now in permanent housing. The total Gypsy Traveller population of England is thus thought to range from 200 000 to 300 000.
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Or https://www.homeless.org.uk/facts/homelessness-in-numbers/rough-sleeping/rough-sleeping-our-analysis
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Settled Gypsy/Roma/etc populations don't seem entirely relevant to this legislation.
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I'm sorry but that would be to presume that the police actually enforce the law in a measured and neutral way - rather than using the law as a weapon to vilify and persecute whoever they don't like.
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Settled Gypsy/Roma/etc populations don't seem entirely relevant to this legislation.
True. I had not read the detail. It is partly relevant however because settled generally means settled on a traveller site. councils provisions of pitches and plots also include provision for this. Travelling show people tend to be seasonal settled overwintering for several months. The provision nationally for pitches and plots has to far exceed the number occupied at any one time to allow travelling. I can’t find the national number of plots and pitches.
The number of people sleeping rough each night at 5000 is still a massive issue, but I don’t think that is the target of these legislative proposed changes. It does tend to be concentrated on bigger towns and cities and even if not, at 1 in 13000 Bristol would have over 40 tonight, but with the concentration on larger towns it is more likely to be 100. That is the number on particular night who couldn’t or wouldn’t go to a shelter. The number that regularly (say once a week) sleep rough will be much higher.
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An official site obviously isn't wild camping and showmen I'd think get permission to set up their temporary sites for the duration of the show. There are annual fairs and circuses on the Downs in Bristol (it's more like a large urban park than what you'd normally call Downs), the vans are pitched next to the show site and it's all clearly above board and authorised. A group of caravans without a show camping in the same place would definitely not be tolerated.
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Currently trespass is normally a civil matter but is a criminal one if you have two or more persons and 6 or more vehicles and you encamp without permission and refuse to leave. The proposed change to the law is to reduce the 6 to 2. There is a worry that it will go much further and people wild camping that refuse to leave will be prosecuted.
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After seeing that Gallows Priti was back in the news I decided to check in on how this affair is carrying on. Your reminder that the consultation closes on March 4th.
I found this document by Friends, Families and Travellers, an NGO who represent travellers' and gypsies' interests. They queried the police forces of the land on the state of current law, and found the following:
We found that:
20 police responses were submitted to the Government’s April 2018 consultation6
.
75% of police responses felt current police powers were sufficient and/or proportionate.
84% of police responses did not support the criminalisation of unauthorised encampments7
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65% of police responses said that lack of site provision was the real problem.
In analysing the findings, there were three key themes which emerged. Firstly, that police
respondents were overwhelmingly against the criminalisation of unauthorised encampments.
Secondly that the vast majority of police respondents felt that current powers available to them
were sufficient and allowed for a proportionate response. Finally, that a significant number of police
responses highlighted that the real problem was the lack of sites for Gypsies and Travellers to live
on.
In response to the 2018 consultation question, ‘Do you consider that the Government should
consider criminalising unauthorised encampments, in addition to the offence of aggravated
trespass?’ 84% of police responses said ‘no’. For example, the National Police Chiefs Council and the
Association of Police and Crime Commissioners said,
“We believe that criminalising unauthorised encampments is not acceptable. Complete
criminalisation of trespass would likely lead to legal action in terms of incompatibility with regard to
the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Public Sector Equality Duty under the Equality Act 2010, most
likely on the grounds of how could such an increase in powers be proportionate and reasonable when
there are insufficient pitches and stopping places?”
Further to this, Cambridgeshire Police Force said,
“Not if this included Gypsy Travellers – this would be criminalising a culture and lifestyle and contrary
to the Human Rights Act 1998 and would not facilitate the Gypsy way of life (Chapman v UK (2001)
33 EHRR 339.”
Garden Court Chambers, the barrister's chamber who have advocated on behalf of among others the Hillingdon families and other victims of The Man, have also written up this uncompromising condemnation of the proposals:
https://www.gardencourtchambers.co.uk/news/ripping-the-heart-out-of-the-nomad-nation
Our views can be put shortly: these proposals are completely disproportionate and unjustifiable.
Conclusion
The Home Office’s proposals amount to criminalisation of the traditional way of life of Gypsies and Travellers. As George Monbiot has said in a recent article in the Guardian [10]:
A week before Patel launched her consultation, the Wiener Holocaust Library in London opened its exhibition on the Porajmos: the genocide of Roma and Sinti people carried out by the Nazis. It shows how ancient prejudices were mobilised to destroy entire peoples. I’m not saying that this is how the situation will unfold in this country, but the exhibition shows us the worst that can happen when the state sanctions the demonisation of an outgroup. First they came for the Travellers …
In our view, a decision to criminalise trespass or strengthen the enforcement powers would be susceptible to challenge in the Courts on grounds that:
Gypsies and Travellers without a lawful site would be subject to continual eviction and under the constant threat of prosecution if they chose to pursue their traditional way of life;
it would breach the rights of Gypsies and Travellers protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights to respect for their traditional way of life and the positive obligation on the government to facilitate that way of life [11];
it would breach the government’s public sector equality duty under Equality Act 2010 s149 (given that the provisions would disproportionately impact Romani Gypsies and Irish Travellers who are recognised as ethnic groups).
We ask how could such a significant increase in enforcement powers be proportionate and reasonable when there are insufficient pitches and stopping places? When hundreds of Gypsies and Travellers have to resort to unauthorised encampments through no fault of their own, how can it be proportionate and reasonable to criminalise them overnight?
We call on the next government to withdraw these offensive proposals and to concentrate instead on ensuring that the shortage of permanent and transit site provision is addressed.
What the fuck is happening to this country.
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Thos are fantastic responses. I'm well impressed with the majority police response too.
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Open letter from the Ramblers to Gallows Priti, with a signature from Cycling UK
https://www.cyclinguk.org/sites/default/files/document/2020/03/ramblers_joint_open_letter_on_trespass_consultation_28.02.20.pdf
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Photos like this are unlikely to help
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-52704317
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That sort of people will enrage people who already get unreasonably enraged at the thought of others being allowed to pitch their tents, and will do nothing at all to anyone who thinks that pitching your tent on a moor is no big deal.
Haters gonna hate.
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Photos like this are unlikely to help
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-52704317
Roadside camping isn't wild camping.
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Photos like this are unlikely to help
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-52704317
Roadside camping isn't wild camping.
Looks like the mine shops near Surrender Bridge. Daft if is, there are loads of tracks up the fells accessible from there, and no one would have ever known.
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An official site obviously isn't wild camping and showmen I'd think get permission to set up their temporary sites for the duration of the show. There are annual fairs and circuses on the Downs in Bristol (it's more like a large urban park than what you'd normally call Downs), the vans are pitched next to the show site and it's all clearly above board and authorised. A group of caravans without a show camping in the same place would definitely not be tolerated.
Are you sure? Parry's Lane on the northern edge of the Downs regularly seems to be full of parked vans. e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/bristol/comments/gmcxa4/does_anyone_know_why_parrys_lane_on_the_downs_is/
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The fairs and circuses set up by the Water Tower, actually on the grass rather than the road. Parry's Lane is the other end of the Downs and the vans there are on the road, rather than the grass, which makes them highways responsibility rather than the Downs Committee.
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Parry's Lane is the other end of the Downs and the vans there are on the road, rather than the grass mud, which makes them highways responsibility rather than the Downs Committee.
FTFY :)
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Photos like this are unlikely to help
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-52704317
Too right. If you’re going to wild camp be discrete! Bright tents in a gang ???
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https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/flames-rage-woods-after-idiot-18302679 (https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/flames-rage-woods-after-idiot-18302679)
And don’t light fires in nature reserves >:(
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Oh it will become illegal if nutter keep doing this - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/19/it-was-like-a-bomb-had-hit-an-off-licence-rise-in-wild-camping-hits-beauty-spots
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The second reading debate for the Bill on unauthorised encampments is happening next week.
Reading the Government's factsheet, they state in the FAQs:
4.2 Is this going to affect people using the countryside?
No, nothing changes for ramblers or those wishing to enjoy the countryside. The offence only affects those residing on, or intending to reside on, land with a vehicle, who cause or are likely to cause significant damage, disruption or distress and who do not leave the land or remove their property without reasonable excuse when asked to do so by the occupier of the land, their representative or a constable.
Given the 'with a vehicle' makes be nervous. Bivvying with a bicycle?
The full details I received are:
MPs will debate the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill on Monday 15 and Tuesday 16 March in the main House of Commons chamber.
This is a Second Reading debate, where Members debate the general principles of the Bill. At the end of the debate, the Commons decides whether the Bill should be given its second reading, meaning it can proceed to the next stage.
The Government has said that this Bill will create a criminal offence of residing in a vehicle on land without permission, but that the new offence has been framed in such a way as to ensure that the rights of ramblers and others to enjoy the countryside are not impacted. The Government has said that the Bill will also give the police the power to seize vehicles, and strengthen existing powers.
You can read the Government's factsheet about this Bill's provisions on unauthorised encampments here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-crime-sentencing-and-courts-bill-2021-factsheets/police-crime-sentencing-and-courts-bill-2021-unauthorised-encampments-factsheet (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-crime-sentencing-and-courts-bill-2021-factsheets/police-crime-sentencing-and-courts-bill-2021-unauthorised-encampments-factsheet)
Watch the debate, which should start at approximately 3.30pm on Monday and 12.30pm on Tuesday, here:
Monday 15 March: https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/b1c475ce-a63f-4769-9070-566963040718 (https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/b1c475ce-a63f-4769-9070-566963040718)
Tuesday 16 March: https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/67a700ab-4500-4fdb-802b-f2e06854f6e1 (https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/67a700ab-4500-4fdb-802b-f2e06854f6e1)
You'll be able to read a transcript of the debates a few hours after they happen: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons (https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons)
Find out more about Second Readings here: https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/passage-bill/lords/lrds-commons-second-reading/
(https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/passage-bill/lords/lrds-commons-second-reading/)
This debate is in addition to any debate the Petitions Committee schedules on this petition. We’ll message you to let you know as soon as the Committee schedules a debate on this petition.
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The current wording is published here https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-01/0268/200268.pdf (https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-01/0268/200268.pdf) (page 66 of the PDF).
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The legal text makes clear that there's an "and" between having a vehicle and causing significant damage. Also the offence is not leaving when asked, not merely being there.
Though the definition of a vehicle is rather curious:
any vehicle, whether or not it is in a fit state for use on 30 roads, and includes any chassis or body, with or without wheels, appearing to have formed part of such a vehicle, and any load carried by, and anything attached to, such a vehicle
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I think that is a long winded way of saying “no gypsies”
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I think that is a long winded way of saying “no gypsies”
Seeing as they've defined "vehicle" to include caravans, mobile homes, broken down buses, etc, yes, it is. Although that doesn't mean an anti-traveller bill won't be used against others.
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I think that is a long winded way of saying “no gypsies”
Yep. Another attack on one if the most marginalised groups in society.