Professor Michelle Norris:

The chair of the expert group is a member of the Traveller community but is unable to be here today. He is a barrister and led on the legal recommendations of the report.

We suggested an ethnic identifier for applications for social housing because it is a means of tracking who is getting into social housing. We raised some concerns in the report that there are new innovations in the allocation of social housing. For instance, some local authorities have what they call a choice-based lettings scheme. This is where one looks up properties available on a website and makes an application over the Internet. This is valuable from the point of view of efficiency and avoiding vacancies. For groups such as Travellers, however, who may have literacy issues and may not have access to electricity, let alone access to the Internet, we felt these schemes create risks that need to be monitored. One way of doing this is through an ethnic identifier for applications.

We also included some recommendations on making the census of population more robust by working with Traveller bodies to come up with a more robust estimate of the size of the population. We need to emphasise that this is voluntary. It is up to people and families to identify themselves as Travellers or not.

On the security firms for evictions, we did not come with figures on that. It was raised in some of the submissions from the Traveller bodies.

We also did not come up with specific recommendations regarding the increase in funding because it was challenging to come up with a specific figure. Funding has fallen but there has been a failure to draw down funding. Table No. 5.4 on page 50 of the report gives the record per local authority over the past ten years. There has been a failure to draw down funding but the amount of funding has also fallen. The main need for additional funding is for additional supply. The evidence we have is that much of the existing capital funding is spent on the refurbishment of existing Traveller-specific units, which is valuable. There is, however, a need to focus on providing funding for additional new supply of Traveller-specific accommodation and a proper monitoring of what is spent on supply and on refurbishment.

Some rural local authorities raised with us that they have much demand from Traveller households for rural social housing such as small cottages in the country. This would be a valuable source of funding but they currently cannot draw from the Traveller-specific accommodation fund. Instead, they are having to fund this from the mainstream social housing side. They recommended that as an additional source of supply.

We did not make specific recommendations on local authority staffing because we feel the needs vary by local authority.

Some of the urban local authorities had large Traveller accommodation sections, and that is useful, but some of the rural local authorities did not.

We put one specific recommendation in place regarding spending on caretakers and on more robust management of halting sites. It was our view and that of some of the local authorities and Traveller groups we met that there are problems with the management of Traveller-specific accommodation. This is driving some of the objections and concerns from the wider community. We felt that spending in that area would achieve a lot of dividends. In the report, we mention the aim of making the estate management function more robust. In response, some of the local authorities raised concerns with us that this would mean spending on anti-social behaviour but that is not what we meant. We meant spending on proper management, on dealing with vacant units - which are a big problem on some halting sites - and on ensuring that any waste is dealt with quickly and that there is better maintenance. A relatively small spend in that area across the local authority sector would improve things.