City bosses have vowed to evict a van-dwelling community from a Bristol beauty spot after parts of the popular parkland were “used as a toilet”.
In a joint statement, Green Party councillors Barry Parsons and Stephen Williams said the discovery of sites filled with human waste on the historic Durdham Down, known locally as the Downs, was “completely unacceptable”.
The enforcement action comes after complaints from residents in the surrounding wealthy suburbs of Redland and Stoke Bishop over the increasing number of lived-in vans and caravansin the park.
At a last count in August, The Independent found there to be more than 100 vehicles on the parkland, making it one of the biggest van-dweller communities in the UK.
When approached, some said living in vehicles on the park was a way of life, while others said they had been forced to due to a housing crisis in Bristol, where private rents rose 23 per cent from 2020 to 2023.
But now, after evidence of areas of park being used as a toilet, Bristol City Council has decided to act.
“We are currently working on an enforcement plan to begin to move the group of lived in vehicles from the Downs,” the councillors said.
“We appreciate that moving such a large group is not going to be an easy task, and will require a lot of coordination, but we cannot allow a public health risk to continue.”
The councillors, which said the open-air toilet use presented a “significant public issue”, said outreach workers would help residents of the vans and caravans find a “route away from vehicle dwelling”.
The work to remove the vehicles, they said, would not be an “easy task” and will require “a lot of coordination”.
They added: “Most vehicle dwellers will not be engaging in this sort of behaviour, but now that this issue has been identified and confirmed, we have to take action to put an end to this behaviour and make sure the Downs remains open to everyone.”
Bristol has seen the number of lived-in vehicles across the city rise 300 per cent in six years to a peak of 680. Most are situated on roadsides, private land and council-owned sites with toilets and running water.
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With tensions flaring within local neighbourhoods over their presence, the council is working on a new policy on how to tackle concerns.
Across the UK, at the last census in 2021, some 104,000 households lived in a caravan or mobile home, 19,000 more than a decade before.
When The Independent visited the vehicle-dwelling community on the Downs in August, campaigners against it said they had evidence of threatening behaviour and antisocial behaviour, including bushes being used as open-air toilets.
They even threatened legal action against the city council for failing to remove the vehicles.
However, some van-dwellers told The Independent it was unfair to tar everyone with the same brush.
On Wednesday, van-dweller Tim, who does not want to give his surname, said: “And where will everyone go now? It’s not dealing with the problem, it’s moving it on somewhere else.”
As part of its newly-created policy, Bristol City Council said it aimed to increase the number of pitches for van-dwellers at council-owned sites from 67 to 250 by the end of March next year.
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