GLAM ROCKED

Last week a group of travellers in South Wales faced eviction not only from the squatted land they’re living on but from the whole county it’s in! They are living on a road which is part of a council estate (in Penarth near Cardiff) that has sat mostly empty for around eight years. Despite there being 5000 homeless people in the Vale of Glamorgan, the residents were evicted from the social housing in order to build yet more yuppie flats. The council are yet to do anything to the site and clearly don’t like the attention the travellers have brought to it so they are attempting to ban them from ‘residing in their vehicles’ throughout the county for three months! The order was directed at named and unnamed individuals suggesting that anybody who spends too long in their vehicle in the area could be breaking the order and face arrest, impounding of vehicle or a £1000 fine.

Bizarrely the case was held in a magistrates court, (a criminal court) despite being a civil matter. One of the travellers (and previous winner of Crap Arrest) told SchNEWS, “Basically our solicitors told us that if we hadn’t challenged this it would have gone through on the nod, but it was a total misuse of the law”. The case has been adjourned for a month to go to county court.

* Having eviction problems? Try the Advisory Service for Squatters www.squatter.org.uk