London Gypsies and Travellers is trying to raise £8000 to help fund its legal challenge to local councils who have won injunction orders banning Gypsies and Travellers from stopping on open spaces – effectively criminalising a way of life. We believe these injunctions break the Equality Act and discriminate against Gypsies and Travellers. Please support us.

We are fighting a vital test case in the High Court, challenging Bromley Council’s intention to introduce a “wide” injunction banning anyone from stopping on open land. Over the past two years, 37 councils have taken out similar injunctions which threaten all Gypsies and Travellers with fines and imprisonment if they camp within their boundaries. If our challenge to Bromley succeeds, it will have major implications for what other councils can do.

Why are the injunctions wrong?

Gypsies and Travellers are recognised as ethnic minorities under the Equality Act 2010. Yet they are constantly discriminated against and excluded. Over many decades councils have failed to fulfill their obligation to provide sites and stopping places.

Many Travellers who live on the road, stopping where they can, don't do so out of choice. There simply aren't any other places for them to stay. Across London, just 10 new pitches for Travellers have been built since 2008 when over 800 are needed.

What are the effects of the injunctions?

The injunctions effectively criminalise a way of life that goes back centuries, when all of us are meant to be protected by equality law.

We believe they break the Equality Act because, though the camping bans apply to everyone, Gypsies and Travellers are most affected. It is not right that while councils are failing to provide sites and stopping places, they are effectively banning Travellers from whole areas.

The injunctions don’t solve anything. They simply push Gypsies and Travellers to stop on the roadside in other areas. Continual evictions cause greater hardship for families on the roadside – encouraging public prejudice, disrupting family life, threatening health and wellbeing and preventing access to education, work and services.

Why we need your support

London Gypsies and Travellers has already taken on Bromley Council in the High Court, challenging its injunction application to stop Travellers and “persons unknown” from camping on 171 open spaces and car parks. We won. The judge recognised that simply pushing families out of one area into another was not a solution and criticised Bromley for not considering alternatives such as negotiation. 

But now Bromley Council are appealing the ruling on 3^rd December. There's limited time and we need to make sure they don’t win, or this situation will get worse. We are trying to raise £8,000 to help fund the challenge. We need your support to allow us to do this.

Implications for everyone

If Bromley win their appeal, it will have major implications. More and more councils will apply for and obtain injunctions, and more and more families – particularly children, the elderly and sick – will be affected. There are alternatives.

We simply want councils to consider their lack of site provision and negotiate with families instead of making them into criminals. Please help us let reason prevail.

The legal team

Marc Willers QC and Tessa Buchanan from Garden Court Chambers  

Chris Johnson from Community Law Partnership