Reading council has taken legal action multiple times to evict Travellers in caravans from its land.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service has found that Reading Borough Council has used legal notices to remove Travellers 30 times over three years.
This has been revealed in a Freedom of Information request (FOI) into actions taken to deal with unauthorised Traveller encampments in the town.
A council information officer provided the number of legal eviction notices they served for illegal encampments from 2020 to 2024.
These are called ‘Written Directions’ under section 77 of the Criminal Justice & Public Order Act 1994.
The directions are explicitly used to compel people in vehicles on land to leave and remove their vehicles and belongings.
They are used when people are residing in vehicles (including caravans) on highway land, other unoccupied land, or occupied land without the occupier’s consent within the council’s area.
The notice directs those people to leave the land and remove their vehicles and any other property they have with them.
You can see the number of written directions below:
2024: four
2023: nine
2022: 10
2021: seven
2020: zero
That’s a total of 30 written directions over the period.
While the council was asked how much it spent on legal fees between 2021/2022 and 2024/2025, the information officer was unable to provide an exact amount.
They replied: “Legal fees incurred in dealing with traveller encampments has ranged anywhere between approximately £70 up to approximately £2,500 including bailiff costs.
“It depends on a number of factors including (i) how much work this Legal Service has to undertake (ii) the size of the encampment (iii) whether court action is required and (iv) whether the instruction of bailiffs is required and if so, the number of bailiffs required.”
