UK legislative discrimination and the impact on Romany & Traveller WASH inequalities

Abstract

This article aims to highlight the impact of the Policing, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act 2022 through the lens of historical UK anti-Romany & Traveller legislation on WASH inequalities. Of which, key aspects of 500 years of discriminatory legislation from the Tudor era to modern Britain contextualises the primary data collected in this study. Data for this study were collected via online surveys, hosted by the software Qualtrics, which were distributed by the method of snowball sampling through social media posts on the platform X, formerly Twitter, for the purpose of gathering qualitative and quantitative data regarding the experiences of discrimination relating to WASH access and the perceived impact of the PCSC Act. Respondents, of which there were 20 of predominantly ethnic Romany & Traveller backgrounds, alluded to a perceived relationship between discrimination and WASH access, and expressed concerns regarding the potential impact the PCSC Act will have upon decreasing WASH accessibility through further increasing the acceptability of anti-Romany & Traveller discrimination. Furthermore, it is concluded that the implementation of such a legislation and its culminative predecessors can be considered persecutive and a violation of the human rights to access water and sanitation.