A Voice For the Voiceless

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The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Law Reformers Back Complaint Against Bailiff

Dale Farm News No 5, 
April 25 2008

For Immediate Release:
Contact:
Richard Sheridan (chair)
Grattan Puxon (secretary)
Dale Farm Housing Association
01206 523528

A law reform group, with links to 40 MPs in the British Parliament, has endorsed the complaint against Gypsy eviction specialists Constant & Co bailiffs, submitted this week to Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw.

The Traveller Law Reform Project is urging the Ministry of Justice to ensure that any new regulation of enforcement agents covers the actions of private bailiff firms who carry out evictions of Gypsies.

It says important issues are raised in the complaint made by Dale Farm Housing Association. These include a call for strict adherence to the legal requirement that a risk assessment be drawn up before each direct action eviction.

Such a report should be made in consultation with those facing eviction, since it is their children and property that  are most in danger.

Policy development officer Richard Solly says in a letter to Constant & Co. that it expects the company, which has been responsible for countless move-on operations against Travellers, in future to abide by health and safety regulations.

Solly points out that reports of excessive force and dubious methods being employed by bailiffs were made to the recent
Independent Task Force on Site Provision and Enforcement.

In his recommendations Sir Brian Briscoe drew attention to the fact that private bailiffs have no supervising body. The task force took evidence from the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which itself had indentified the need for regulation of enforcement agencies. The department expressed the view that real change in the situation should follow as soon as possible.

The TLRP, which works on behalf of the Gypsy Council and
the Irish Travellers Movement among others, has a close
association with the All Party Parliamentary Group for Gypsy
and Traveller Law Reform, chaired by Julie Morgan, MP.