Unauthorised Encampments

Gavin Williamson Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2010 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)]

I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for securing this debate today.

I think that many if not all of us in Westminster Hall today have had to deal with the very difficult problem of Gypsy and Traveller sites. It is an absolutely critical issue in South Staffordshire. Only last weekend, in the village of Coven Heath we had an illegal invasion of a field, involving nine caravans. I can see an application going in to make that site permanent in the very near future.

South Staffordshire already has to carry a great burden in terms of providing accommodation for Gypsy and Traveller sites. From 2007 until today, 30 pitches have been granted planning permission in South Staffordshire for Gypsy and Traveller sites. Every single one of those 30 pitches was rejected by local people and local councillors, but they were forced on them by the last Labour Government. That is an utter and total disgrace.

It does not stop there. We already have three applications involving another 16 pitches that are going to the planning inspectors at Bristol. Because of the last Labour Government’s idea that there should be one law for the settled community and a different law for the Gypsy and Traveller community, there is every chance that those applications could get passed, too. What is even worse is that it does not stop there. Another 13 pitches have already been applied for that are due to go to planning.

Through their famous circular on Gypsy and Traveller caravan sites—ODPM 01/2006—the last Government have created an imbalance in the law, which discriminates against every person in this country who is not a Gypsy or a Traveller. I know that it has been announced that that circular will be changed, but I urge the Minister to ensure that it is changed swiftly.

The Government have announced that the regional spatial strategies are going to be abolished—

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

They have been abolished.

[Gavin Williamson]

I am told by my hon. Friend that they have been abolished, but we know that the Gypsy Traveller accommodation assessments are being used to get these sites passed on appeal. I urge the Minister to do all he can to ensure that they are scrapped.

The Gypsy and Traveller accommodation assessment for the west midlands was pulled together by Salford university, which went around the west midlands and decided that, if there were 40 encampments in a district, it therefore needed another 40, and if a district had one encampment, it needed one extra. That is incompetent. My daughter of five could have done a better and more worthwhile report than Salford university’s. I urge the Minister to freeze every single planning application until new rules are drawn up. This Government have signalled their intention of dealing with the problem. I demand of the Minister not just to talk but to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend makes a similar point to my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe. Both my hon. Friends are quite right, although their point is not absolutely central to the topic of today’s debate, which is the illegal occupation of land owned by Gypsies, Travellers and others.

As I said, the pattern we see is a similar one, and many people have described it in the debate. People move on to land, often on a bank holiday weekend. Before anybody knows what is happening, hard standing has gone down, toilet blocks have been erected and gardens have been put in. Often, little bungalows—we are not talking about caravans—are established in a very short time, as I have seen in Minety in my constituency. I have eight or 10 illegal Gypsy encampments in my constituency, including at Calcutt park, near Cricklade, and various other places. In a short time, something that looks for all the world like a village has been established. There are wheelie bins at the end of the drive, electricity has been laid on and these people have established something that no one else would be allowed to establish.

I will not bore hon. Members by repeating what a number of my hon. Friends have eloquently described. However, I want to address the reason why such developments are allowed to occur. My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) referred to the way in which the noble Lord Prescott—what a noble Lord he is—introduced planning circular 01/06. Hon. Members will recall that the circular told planning inspectors that where local authorities are not able to demonstrate that there is adequate provision for Gypsies and Travellers elsewhere in their area, there should be a presumption in favour of illegal Gypsy and Traveller encampments. That has meant—I have had several such cases in my constituency—that where the planning inspector sits on an appeal, the law requires him to say that unless the local authority can demonstrate that there is adequate provision elsewhere, he must give the Gypsies and Travellers permission for their illegal encampment. I do not blame the inspectors; they have no other option but to do that, because that is what the single planning note requires them to do.

Leaving aside the two-tier planning system that such an arrangement implies—I will come back to that in a second—there are several specific problems associated with the circular. First, it does not stipulate who Gypsies and Travellers are. No distinction is made under law between hippies, new age travellers, people who are homeless, traditional Romanies, of whom there are many in my constituency, Irish Travellers, Roma and people coming in from France. Indeed, the French Government recently expelled a large number of Roma, and there is nothing to prevent them from coming here and declaring themselves to be Gypsies or Travellers. There is therefore no definition in the law to distinguish between those people.

As another speaker mentioned a moment ago, when the Gypsy and Traveller assessments were made under the regional spatial strategy—I am glad that that document is now defunct—local authorities were required to assess how many Travellers there were in their area and what provision there was for them. However, there is no way of doing that. By definition, these people are Travellers. Are we talking about the Travellers resident in the county of Wiltshire, the south-west of England, the west of England, Wessex, England or what? There is no scientific way of assessing who these people are, because, by definition, they do not live in one place. A very large number of the Travellers in my constituency come from Ireland. Others come from the continent of Europe.

Incidentally, one interesting side issue is that the Irish and the Romanies will not live on the same site. The site at Thingley junction in my constituency has vacancies, but it is occupied by Irish Travellers. The Romanies, perfectly reasonably, say that they do not want to go there, because the two groups do not like each other. I am just not certain, however, that society has a duty to provide for people who do not happen to like each other. If somebody came to my constituency surgery and said, “I want a council house, but I’m not going to live in that council estate full of Irish people, because I don’t want to live with the Irish,” I would say, “I’m extremely sorry about that madam, but you’re jolly well going to have to put up with it.” The same applies in this case.

As I said, we do not know who these people are. By definition, they are Travellers. The Traveller population in the United Kingdom has been increasing exponentially over the past 30 or 40 years, and I will come back to that in one second. Asking a local authority whether it has enough provision for these people is an impossible question to answer. It cannot, by definition, say, “Yes, we do.”

[Gavin Williamson]

I am not sure whether my hon. Friend has witnessed a similar situation in Wiltshire, but a number of Gypsies and Travellers in South Staffordshire have successfully applied for planning permission and obtained established sites. I then notice in the local newspaper that those sites are being commercially marketed to people who are not Gypsies and Travellers. People are exploiting the law for personal profit.

[Mr Gray]

I noticed that episode when it was recently mentioned in the newspapers, but that has not been my experience. All the illegally occupied sites in my constituency, and I think throughout the west country, have gone on to be fully occupied by Gypsies and Travellers. I have not seen any being sold on, although I suppose there is no reason why they should not be. However, I have my doubts about whether a local authority would give planning permission to a settled person to take over a Gypsy encampment afterwards. I certainly recommend that it should not.

The numbers are extremely interesting. When I was special adviser to the then Secretary of State for the Environment we had the great joy of repealing the legislation that required local authorities to make provision for Gypsies and Travellers in their counties. We did so because when the Labour Government passed the provisions there were, from memory, 3,500 illegally parked caravans in England. In 1996, by the time we had repealed them, there were 6,000 illegally parked caravans, so the illegals had more or less doubled. That was in addition to the 7,000 pitches that local authorities had by then provided. Those authorities had provided twice as many pitches as they were required to under the Act, and a further 6,000 were illegally parked. That total of 13,000 caravans in England has now become 18,355, according to a recent survey. The number went from 3,500 to 18,500 in as many years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Stunell]

I am not announcing the details of the Government’s policy on Gypsies and Travellers in today’s debate—I cannot pre-empt such an announcement. However, we are looking at such matters carefully, with some policies to be made explicit in the localism Bill, together with what we are doing about planning powers and enforcement, and some policies from other directions, as we work through the implications of providing incentives for local authorities to provide sites where needed.

[Gavin Williamson]

I asked a brief question in my speech about Gypsy and Traveller accommodation needs assessments. When considering appeals, are the planning inspectors to disregard totally the flawed GTAAs?

[Andrew Stunell]

The Secretary of State has made it clear that we are repealing circular 01/2006. I hope that the hon. Gentleman feels that that is the answer he needs. If I have missed a point, he can write to me and we can explore the issue in a little more depth.

In the course of preparing for the debate, I had the opportunity to speak to the assistant chief constable of Warwickshire, who holds the Gypsy and Traveller portfolio for the Association of Chief Police Officers. He takes responsibility across England for the police approach. His views were clear. Of course it is right that there should be strong enforcement and that the existing law should be followed through—and promptly. There should not be long delays while sites that should never have been there in the first place get unofficially authorised, as outlined so eloquently today.

However, as a senior police officer speaking on behalf of ACPO, he was also clear that the policing of such issues cannot be tackled solely by increasingly rigorous enforcement. We must tackle the underlying conditions of deprivation and alienation that beset the issue. That is why, as well as following through on what the Secretary of State has already announced and on all the other work to ensure fair treatment for both the settled and the Gypsy and Traveller communities, we are also making sure that we tackle the underlying issues of disadvantage.

I was asked one or two specific questions and, for the most part, I hope that I have dealt with them. I have tackled and explained retrospective planning permission, which will be dealt with in the localism Bill. As far as treating planning applications equally is concerned—some examples were given by the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson)—we will have guidance and a light touch, rather than a prescriptive national code overruling local common sense.

I noted a point made by the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins). He wanted to know whether we could have a proper land register of public land and assets. Oh, how I wish we could, and how I wish it was possible to settle all such questions. Hopefully, local authorities of all sorts, and the Government, will become more alert to what they own, why they own it and whether they need to, thus proceeding towards a more rational estate.