Planning Policy: Traveller Sites

David Simmonds Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on securing the debate. The contributions of all hon. Members have helped to illustrate both the complexity of this issue and its importance at community level.

Every local authority has a quasi-judicial role as a planning authority, in that it has to follow planning law and the relevant statutes, and my hon. Friend and other hon. Members have called for everyone to be treated equally before the law for the purposes of the planning process. That is clearly a complex challenge for our local authorities, which also have various statutory duties as housing providers. When considering an application, the local authority has to ensure that planning law is fully upheld, but it also has a role in designating sites on which Traveller pitches and other development may take place. Most of us will have experience of that matter—the situation at Jackets Lane in my constituency is almost identical to that described by my hon. Friend. Like many Members, I am fortunate to have two local authorities with full housing revenue account, local authority-maintained Traveller pitches, as well as privately designated sites.

However, it is understandable that, for the reasons outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas)—I have experienced this in my own home—the sites can cause a great deal of community concern, given some aspects of the behaviour of individuals associated them. We cannot simply say that the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community is one community. In my constituency, there are settled Travellers, who have chosen to occupy a bricks and mortar home and may require family members who are travelling to be able to stay close to them at certain times of year. There are people with much more ancient lifestyles, particularly among some of the Roma and traditional Gypsy community, whose requirements are very different. All our local authorities need to be flexible, and communities need to be aware of those distinctions, so that the responses that we put in place are appropriate.

We all accept that provision will be inadequate for some individuals, and that there may not be a spot on a local authority-provided site when they arrive. Indeed, the behaviour of some, who may not even be UK residents but who can arrive in large numbers and undertake unlawful and illegal incursions, can significantly affect the reputation of other members of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton asked an important question in the context of parliamentary proceedings: how can something that is either unlawful or, in some cases, specifically illegal in planning law be rendered lawful by other considerations? If a property developer were to purchase the field and seek to build a mansion, there would be rigorous enforcement against them. If a developer sought to build family homes, or a care home, there would be rigorous enforcement against them. Why is it, therefore, that other elements of our law allow one individual to bypass the statutory planning process and rules, especially when the site may subsequently be sold to another occupier? How can we ensure that those elements do not create a back door to flouting the planning rules? I have personal experience of a developer who cited diplomatic immunity as a reason why the local authority could not carry out enforcement action against structures built on agricultural land.

Given the enormous remediation costs associated with abuses of the planning process, it is not surprising that many local authorities are extremely concerned, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove, with his experience as a local authority leader, described. We can all think of examples. A site may be used for housing development after illegal occupation, or it may, for example, be used for waste disposal. Buckinghamshire council, on the border of my constituency, was faced with having to clean up a site that a group of Travellers had purchased from a farmer and then used to dispose of asbestos and hazardous waste, which was removed at enormous cost—a multimillion-pound cost—to the taxpayer.

In all such cases, there is a common issue: the local authority’s inability to use swift and robust enforcement powers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton said, once a site is occupied and the use becomes established, it is very difficult to change that in the way the community would expect. During the recent general election campaign, I delivered leaflets to properties that formed part of an illegal encampment— because those individuals had been there for so long, they were on the electoral roll. Other residents in the community asked, “How is it that all these processes that are designed to make sure everyone follows the law can come together in a way that enables those rules to be flouted?”

On behalf of the official Opposition, I extend an offer to the Minister, who has taken an incredibly constructive approach to all the issues in his portfolio. Members on both sides of this debate have made constructive contributions and have set out ideas about how we can more effectively address the broad sweep of concerns that arise from this issue. My constituents are affected by an unauthorised encampment in the Hog’s Back, and have expressed great frustration that the local authority planning notice that applies to the site has effectively been bypassed as the individuals have moved to another part of the site. Those kinds of things understandably create a public backlash, as people feel that the law is not working effectively and is not on their side.

It is one thing for local authorities to have to resort to section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to deal with illegal and unauthorised encampments that are causing a nuisance, but activity that can become established through the passage of time needs to be dealt with differently. I suggest to the Minister that, as we work together on that, we should also consider the operation of things such as the planning conditions that apply in national parks. My hon. Friend has the North Yorkshire Moors and the Yorkshire Dales national parks near his constituency. It is common to apply to national parks specific planning conditions that do not operate in other areas, such as conditions around the occupation of new homes by agricultural workers. Again, that provides scope for abuse of the planning system. For example, a developer could build a property purportedly for agricultural worker use and then say they wish to convert it to a holiday let or an extended family home.

There is also the wider issue of ancillary uses, which my hon. Friend referred to. When a piece of land is in the green belt, perhaps with agricultural designation, there are always opportunities for a prospective applicant to say that they need a barn for their farming business or a sports pavilion because they hope to use the land for sporting activity. That potentially enables a property footprint to be established. In planning terms, conversion of that—legalisation of the occupation—follows later, to the dismay of local residents, who then question the effectiveness of the planning system. The scope for the use to become established and the property to be sold on for profit in a way that is not available to developers who seek to work within the system remains a significant cause for concern.

I thank all Members who have contributed to this balanced debate, which has highlighted many angles to the way in which this policy interacts with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller and settled communities. I urge the Minister to make the best use possible of the expertise of Members across the House and ensure that, as we move to update planning law, we have effective enforcement powers in place so that all our residents—all our constituents—have confidence that they will be treated equally before the law in the way that Parliament expects.