Vauxhall's factory at Ellesmere Port is to be one of four plants in Europe that will build the new Astra.
Gypsies and Travellers are a long established ethnic group in Britain.
Their histories and traditions stretch back many hundreds of years. The word 'Gypsy' comes from the word 'Egyptian', it was the word given to the Romanies when they came to Western Europe as it was thought they came from Egypt. In fact they came from Northern India.
Gypsy & Traveller families are generally seen as being a similar group of nomadic people who reside in mobile caravans or trailers. Although Gypsies & Travellers share many aspects of their lifestyle and culture in common with others, there exist many different groups, each having their own distinct heritage and cultural identity. For simplicity's sake, travelling people in the UK can be said to belong to one of the following five main groupings:
Figures for the approximate size of each community are taken from the OFSTED report on the Education of Travelling Children, published in 1996; however, other sources estimate the size of the UK's total Traveller community to be somewhere between 90,000 and 120,000.
There is a twice yearly Gypsy and Traveller Caravan Count which each Local Authority carriers out. The January count showed that there were about 15,000 Gypsy and Traveller caravans in England.
Local Authority's had a statutory duty (under The Caravan Sites Act 1968) to provide adequate site provision until it was repealed by the Criminal Justice and Public Disorder Act 1994.
There are 329 public Gypsy sites in England with a total of 5,387 pitches. As can be seen from these numbers there are many Gypsy and Traveller families who have no place to live legally and are homeless, which has seen the increase of encampments across the country.
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