Housing and Planning Bill

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 82H, which has broad support across this House. This is a simple probing amendment that would seek to retain Sections 225 and 226 of the Housing Act 2004 in legislation, requiring local authorities to undertake a direct assessment of Gypsy and Traveller needs. I shall also speak to Amendment 82GD, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, which may point towards an alternative way forward.

I start by welcoming the publication of the Government’s draft guidance on Clause 115, which makes clear the duty of local authorities to undertake a specific assessment of all those whose primary residence is in caravans or houseboats, including Gypsies, Travellers and showmen communities. The very presence of this draft guidance is reassuring, and I am glad that the Government are making progress. I recognise that in the rush to get this guidance out it may not have been possible for Ministers and officials to consult all stakeholders about the content but I am sure that the Minister will reassure the House that all the relevant parties—including representatives of the Gypsy and Traveller communities—will be consulted extensively before final guidance is published. I know that there are a number of concerns about the proposed guidance, not least the failure to define what is meant by a household —something which has led to a great deal of confusion and cross-authority discrepancies in the past, as authorities have defined it in different ways.

I understand that the Government’s stated intention behind Clause 115 is to remove a general perception that Gypsies and Travellers are given favourable treatment under planning law. I also recognise that under current legislation there is no requirement to perform a specific assessment of those residing in caravans and on waterways who are not part of the Gypsy and Traveller communities, and that this may result in such groups slipping through the net when local authorities assess housing needs. As such, I have no objection in principle to the expansion of the existing assessment requirements to cover all those residing in caravans and on waterways, as long as this is genuinely an expansion and does not threaten the current arrangements regarding assessment of specific Gypsy and Traveller needs.

With this in mind I will highlight two main concerns, which I hope the Government will address. The first is the total lack of mention of Gypsy and Traveller communities in Clause 115 and only the smallest mention of them in the draft guidance. It is important to bear in mind that some local authorities, often under pressure from the wider community to refrain from making land available for Gypsy and Traveller sites, are liable to seize on any excuse not to undertake a full and detailed assessment of Gypsy and Traveller needs. The Government’s own impact assessment seems to recognise that the failure to put reference to Gypsies and Travellers in primary legislation—relegating any mention to secondary guidance only—may give local authorities the impression that the importance of assessing those needs has been downgraded in the new legislation. Making it clear in primary legislation that any assessment requirements include a requirement to assess the needs of Gypsies, Travellers and showmen residing in or having recourse to a local authority is therefore essential to maintain the pressure on local authorities to carry out such an assessment.

The simplest way of ensuring that the Gypsy and Traveller communities are directly mentioned in primary legislation is to ensure that Sections 225 and 226 of the Housing Act 2004 remain in legislation, as my amendment proposes. I see no reason why the two pieces of legislation cannot stand side by side, with local authorities subsuming the Gypsy and Traveller assessment requirement within the broader assessment of caravans and waterways. There are, of course, alternative ways of maintaining reference to Gypsies and Travellers, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, being one of them. None of these amendments would in any way imperil the Government’s aim of expanding the assessment requirement and ensuring parity of treatment for all in the assessment process.

The second concern that I have centres on the categories of caravans and inland waterways that are proposed in Clause 115 and reflected in the draft guidance. The use of these simple categories fails to capture the nuanced differences in the needs of the groups for which this legislation is intended to provide assessment, and may result in an inadequate assessment process if these nuances are not made clear. The accommodation needs of those residing in static caravans, for example, may be very different from the needs of Gypsy communities that are constantly on the move, which will again be very different from the needs of travelling showmen, who often require extra space for vehicles and equipment. I hope the Minister can confirm that these distinctions will be made clear in the revised guidelines and that any assessment will be required to differentiate between them.

What these categories ignore altogether, however, is the requirement that local authorities include the needs of Gypsies and Travellers living in settled, bricks-and-mortar housing in their assessment, despite this being included in the guidance. Given that any guidance issued is guidance only, can the Minister explain to the House how the Government intend to ensure that local authorities assess vulnerable Gypsy and Traveller families who might be abiding in bricks-and-mortar housing, perhaps only temporarily, when under Clause 115 there will be no statutory duty on them to do so?

I hope that everyone across the House recognises the importance of ensuring that local authorities are equipped to provide properly for the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers in their communities. A failure to provide a proper, robust requirement on local authorities to assess the needs of Gypsies and Travellers will inevitably hinder the provision of accommodation sites and space, which is only likely to increase the number of illegal sites, stoke community tensions and endanger a cultural identity that has endured for hundreds of years.

If the Government are committed to expanding the assessment requirement, that expansion needs to be done very carefully, building on the good work that is already being done to foster stronger relationships between local authorities and vulnerable minority communities. Indeed, I hope the Government might use these legislative changes as an opportunity to work with the Gypsy and Traveller communities to improve the assessment process, not undermine it. I hope the Minister can provide assurance that this will be the case.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment and draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the Register of Interests as a district councillor. I flagged up at Second Reading that I would be returning to this issue, and I support wholeheartedly the comments of the previous two speakers.

In 2004, while I was still the leader of Somerset County Council, the Government passed the Housing Act, of which Section 225 ensured that:

“Every housing authority must, when undertaking a review of housing needs in their district under section 8 of the Housing Act 1985 … carry out an assessment of the accommodation needs of gypsies and travellers residing in or resorting to their district”,

and prepare a strategy to meet those needs. Section 226 went on to provide guidance on how this was to be carried out. This significant step forward required councils to make assessments of the Travelling community’s needs. Of course, many councils had been doing this for a considerable time and making the necessary provision as a result; however, many were not—bowing to extremes of public opinion and abdicating their duty to provide accommodation for all types of people.

I am at a loss to understand why, apart from again bowing to pressure from certain quarters, the Government are now seeking to delete this requirement for local authorities to make provision in their housing needs assessments and local plans for sites for Travelling communities. The requirement is there now and is not arduous. Making it virtually impossible for Travelling communities to find permanent or temporary sites will only lead to an increase in what are known as illegal encampments. I will refer to this again later.

As we have heard, there are several groups of Travelling communities: Roma Gypsies, covered by the Race Equality Act; showpeople, including those in the circus trade, fairgrounds and historic seasonal fairs; and other Travellers, some of whom are called “new age” Travellers. The groups are distinct and have different requirements. I have long been an advocate of the need to provide permanent sites for individual Gypsy families, which will often include more than one generation. I have received a briefing from Friends, Families and Travellers and I have also met with representatives of the Showmen’s Guild and received a briefing from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Most of us will have seen at one time or another a group of caravans parked on a wide grass verge, in a lay-by, in a farmer’s field, or even in a town centre car park—the latter can be very disruptive to residents trying to park to do their shopping or visit the library. However, mostly the caravans are in the countryside and cause little problem. Sometimes the local landowner will allow them to stay, but more commonly legal action is taken to move them on. This is costly and, without legalised authorised sites to move them on to, only displaces them further down the road, or maybe over the neighbouring county boundary, where they become someone else’s problem.

In March 2015, guidance was produced by the DCLG, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice on Dealing with Illegal and Unauthorised Encampments. Most of this dealt with moving the problem on and said:

“Public bodies should not gold-plate human rights and equalities legislation”.

Did any of them ever actually do this? The document might just as well have said, “Ignore it altogether”. This is despite statistics from January 2015 showing there were 593 more caravans on authorised sites than the year before—so not illegally camped.