Planning System: Gypsies and Travellers

Elliot Colburn Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not agree that, in many instances, the police are not using the powers available to them? That is part of the problem with the system. The statement that there are sufficient powers at the moment does not seem to be reflected in the action that gets taken. When unauthorised encampments turn up, the police are sometimes too afraid to take any action.

[Kate Green]

It would be unfair of me to draw attention to the massive reduction in police numbers over the past 10 years, which may be contributing to that problem, but that is not what the National Police Chiefs Council told the all-party parliamentary group on Gypsies, Travellers and Roma. It said that it believes that negotiation and communication with the community is more effective than enforcement, and that is what it tries to do. No police officer has ever told me that he or she has been afraid to engage with Travellers on unauthorised encampments. It is important that we do not make policy by anecdote.

It is really useful to have this debate. It is right, as the hon. Member for Kettering said, that we look at the responsibilities, obligations and rights of the public as a whole—the settled community and the travelling community. We must get the right balance between them. I do not believe that the balance is currently weighted in favour of the travelling community. Quite the opposite: too many of them are living in disadvantaged, marginalised situations on unsuitable—sometimes authorised and unsuitable—sites. We need a proper national planning framework that is properly managed to balance the interests of the settled community and the travelling community. I invite the Minister to think broadly about how that can best be achieved.

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing this debate. I declare an interest: I am a member of Sutton London Borough Council.

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that there needs to be a change. We have heard about the difficulties that the current state of affairs causes for the travelling community, especially in terms of work, health and schooling. In the previous Parliament, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) introduced an excellent Bill that would have addressed those concerns. It was incredibly well-balanced, and I would have thought that it would have had immense support in this place. I am incredibly sorry that it did not make it.

The current policy on Travellers puts an obligation on local authorities to come up with their own assessment of need, but I want to give an example from my constituency to illustrate why I think it does not work. My constituency of Carshalton and Wallington also lies in the London Borough of Sutton. It is another Lib Dem council—my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) is laughing; I think he knows what is about to come. It conducted its assessment of need when it was coming up with its draft local plan in 2016. The Roundshaw Downs site at the end of Hannibal Way in Beddington was considered for a new permanent site. After an assessment of need, the council came to the conclusion that it needed another site, despite the fact that there was room to expand an existing site down in Woodmansterne—also in my constituency.

After massive public objection and a botched public consultation, the council eventually withdrew the Roundshaw site and agreed to extend the existing site in Woodmansterne, but because of the poor way it had conducted its consultation and assessment, the planning inspectorate has not accepted that that is sufficient to see it through to the term of the local plan. Therefore, the Lib Dem council now has to come up with a further Gypsy and Traveller site plan by 2023.

As a councillor, I have on several occasions asked for assurances that the Roundshaw site, and indeed the other site being considered at the time—next to Sutton cemetery in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully)—will not be revisited because they were identified as inappropriate. However, the Lib Dems have failed to provide that reassurance. That is perhaps not surprising, given the way they have handled encampments in the London Borough of Sutton in the past.

Only a few short years ago, our borough was subject to an entire summer of illegal encampments arriving on parks across my constituency and that of my hon. Friend. As hon. Members know, that was immediately followed by rising tensions in the constituency—sometimes violent flare-ups, unfortunately—and things such as fly-tipping. In one instance, unfortunately, smashed glass was left behind on purpose in a park, which caused injuries to children and pets. Many right hon. and hon. Members will have experienced such a difficulty when encampments happen in their patches. Because of that, the unwillingness of the local police to do anything about it, and the local authority’s slow progress in beginning the process of evicting people from the sites, I believe that a change in the law needs to be made.

The first subject I want to touch on is welfare checks, which are rightly conducted to ensure that people arriving on encampments, especially children, are in good health and get access to the support they need—unfortunately, as we have heard, more often they do not, which is a shame. However, those who know the planning system and how to work their way around it also know that if there is a change in the make-up of the site—if someone new arrives—the process starts again, which causes a delay.

High Court proceedings are not exactly fast and, although faster options may be available to local police forces or local authorities, they seem unwilling or unable to use them. Once an encampment is finally moved on, it will often move to another park later that day—as we found a couple of years ago in Sutton, despite the existing site in Woodmansterne. That is clearly not sustainable and a change needs to be made. I reiterate my support for the Bill introduced in the last Parliament by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire. I suggest that the Government should consider that as a potential starting point for looking at the issue in this Parliament.

I hope that the Minister will provide some reassurance that, as we try to address the problems, work on community cohesion and address the scandals of housing, work and schooling in travelling communities, we can update support and guidance for local authorities, improve enforcement and, perhaps, replace the requirement to provide permanent sites with a requirement to provide transitory sites, to which deposits and rent can be paid to cover the cost.

The current state of affairs does absolutely nothing for either the settled or the travelling communities. We need a balanced approach to ensure that both sets of communities feel comfortable living alongside one another.