I am so sorry that the Eckington travellers have, at the moment, lost the legal fight to live on the land they own.

The word "illegal" is persistently used by the press and individuals to describe their unenviable situation. These are people who might have known they stood little chance of getting planning before they laid down essential services. Not because of any unreasonableness in their planning application, but because there exists a weighty discrimination within planning for such housing solutions. They would have no doubt been given hope by others who were able to succeed in getting retrospective planning permission. Indeed they had to act on that faith from the beginning. Can home owners in the area imagine purchasing their properties, decorating them to their tastes, landscaping their gardens only to be turfed out a year later to live on the street because the political tide was against that sort of person living in this sort of area?

How is it that in other legal matters a precedent is often the norm for determining later cases, yet here were optimistic, creative, honest individuals believing from previous planning decisions that their homes may become secure only to be branded 'illegal' from all sides and finally to be put out into the street. I live in a campervan, not being able to afford to rent on the minimum wage and being on a housing waiting list several years long. Having been physically attacked, my vehicle damaged and my bike stolen in 3 separate incidents in West Worcestershire over the past 3 months I can assure you that life on the road is not pretty and I feel for the families with children who have been forced out of Eckington.

With a housing crisis as bad as we have in Britain I am gobsmacked that it doesn't take a higher agenda on the election campaign. Presumably that is because everyone in a position of power and authority in this country has a warm safe home to return to every night.

Shame on anyone who objected to their plans. Your homes were once built on meadow and hillside too. We cannot keep England as a Utopian dream. If the 'law' is in your favour then you are lucky. What is criminal is to deny others a home.

Angela McBride, Evesham.