"It is hardly a big issue. "
Not to you obviously, but then again, your stance on race is hardly a recommendation.
To repeat that these signs are not common in Britain as a mantra without ONE SINGLE SHRED OF PROOF, AND TO CONTINUE TO IGNORE - EVEN WITHOUT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, proof to the contrary, is enough of an indication to me that they are common enough.
I've seen them (last time on Saturday-week in Somerset), I've been assured by some of the victims that they, and other forms of racist exclusion are still very much alive and kicking, I saw them in their hundreds throughout the time I worked with Travellers, I've read the reports that still prove them to be around (even from those who would not be consideed to be sympathetic to ethnic minorities).
The fact that you put so much effort into threads like this sums it all up really.
Another piece for you to ignore from a 2009 study of Traveller conditions in Britain today - racism not a problem in Britain - yeah, right!!!.
Jim Carroll

"To choose, fix, or ignore culture? The cultural politics of Gypsy and Traveler mobility in England
Peter Kabachnik

Studies show that Gypsies and Travellers have poor access to education and health services and have high unemployment rates (Clark and Greenfields 2006). Conditions at unauthorized caravan sites and, indeed, some official local council sites are appalling, with no garbage disposal, no sewers or plumbing, no fresh water, and no electricity and phone services. The sites are often located in industrial areas or near garbage dumps. The media is saturated with negative and sensationalized images of such sites. Repeated opinion polls show that Gypsies are the least liked minority group. Racism is pervasive towards nomads, from individual acts of representation and hate speech and 'No Gypsy/ Traveller' signs adorning pubs, to violent hate crimes, both symbolic and actual, as well as the structural and insti¬tutional varieties of discrimination.
While the predictions of the inevitable, and always imminent, disappearance of nomadic ways of life have repeatedly proven premature, the brutal history and difficult contemporary circumstances leads many sympathetic obser¬vers   to ask: Why go on living such an oppressed way of life? Why not give up nomadism and its corresponding struggle, and turn in your caravan for a nice 'regular' house or apartment? These queries are some¬times offered not out of malice, but with a sincere concern for their well-being.
Irrespective of the intention, by imploring nomads to change their way of life—for their own good—it is suggested that all that is required for Gypsies and Travellers is to simply choose. Why is the nomadic way of life so casually and effortlessly deemed a choice? Furthermore, is this the proper way to frame this debate—are Gypsies and Travellers stubbom and backward, preventing themselves from the benefits of a more settled, and hence civilized, way of life by hanging on to nomadism? Or alternatively, is this particular cukuraliit discourse a way of denying the distinctive and legitimate way of life of certain British Gypsies and Irish Travellers who continue to practice a nomadic way of life?
This 'culture as choice' rhetoric, though common, has not been very successful in making Gypsies and Travellers disappear, though it has surely helped to maintain high levels of intolerance. Interestingly, this 'culture as choice' idea is failing, in part, due to its collision with another cultural discourse. Here the opposite idea is imposed. Gypsies and Travellers cannot stop practicing nomadism since that is what they are—nomads! The 'culture as nature' argument, an example of an essentialist cultural theory, makes the term 'sedentary Gypsy or Traveller' an oxy¬moron. It is this idea that at the same time enables predictions of the extinction of their culture, as once nomadism ends, so too do Gypsies and Travellers."