Planning System: Gypsies and Travellers

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend makes a superb point in an excellent way, and I entirely concur. However, the settled community does not include only residents and businesses, but Travellers. During one of his excellent debates on this issue, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire pointed out that we know from the 2011 census that three quarters of Gypsies and Travellers live in houses, bungalows or flats. Only a quarter live in caravans or mobile homes, yet Gypsies and Travellers as a whole have an existing, separate planning law for themselves that only applies to a quarter of their population. That kind of special treatment within the planning system applies to no other ethnic group.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree—perhaps he will not—that historically, planning laws have discriminated against Travellers who live a nomadic lifestyle, the percentage who are not in the bungalows he describes? Those laws have sealed up areas in which Travellers have traditionally stayed; have prevented Travellers from being able to move easily from site to site; and have created hostilities not because they have given preferential treatment to Travellers, but because they have given them discriminatory treatment. Is it not an indictment that five councils in this country have still not identified any Traveller sites, and very few have identified their full limit? That is the discrimination in the planning system, not the other way around, as the hon. Gentleman seems to suggest.

[Mr Hollobone]

I do not think anyone has any objection to Gypsies and Travellers who legitimately want to travel, so long as when they park up, they do so lawfully, on land that they either own or have permission to park up on. The problem is that the quarter of the Traveller community who do travel all too frequently park up on land that they do not own, and where they do not have permission to be.

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[Mr Hollobone]

My right hon. Friend does not have to apologise for having a second bite at the cherry. He is welcome to intervene as often as he likes, because he is an expert on the issue. He makes an extremely good point in a thoroughly competent way.

I called for the debate because the activities of Gypsies and Travellers are a huge issue in the borough of Kettering. It is a combination of Gypsies and Travellers parking up on publicly or privately owned land without permission, and of their purchasing land in the countryside and immediately building plots without any intention of applying for planning permission. They clearly realise that the land is an unsuitable place for such a development, but they are cocking a snook at local authorities. There are therefore two issues. First, there is the trespass issue of parking up on land that they do not own. Secondly, there is the issue of purchasing land and developing Gypsy and Traveller sites with no intention of applying for planning permission.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

In local plans, councils must identify land that is acceptable for private housing and for business to meet the needs of the local community. If they do not identify suitable pieces of land, the local plan will be rejected. Why can councils fail to identify pieces of land suitable for being converted into sites for the Traveller community and have their local plans accepted?

[Mr Hollobone]

Kettering Borough Council has identified suitable sites for Gypsies and Travellers, but it is being abused by them. In the village of Broughton in my constituency, a Traveller encampment has permission for a limited number of plots, but the number of Gypsy and Traveller families living on that site far exceeds the permitted number of plots available, and is expanding all the time.

There is another case near the village of Loddington, where Gypsies and Travellers recently purchased land in open countryside. On a Friday, they moved in all the heavy building equipment, put in hard standing and started erecting plots without any kind of permission. The local borough council immediately served a temporary stop notice, which was ignored, and then a permanent stop notice, which was ignored. The development is there. Planning permission may or may not be sought. If anyone else were to dig up a field in open countryside and build a house, the local authority would intervene in the same way and the individual would stop the development, but that self-restraint does not seem to apply to Gypsies and Travellers.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that in its local plan, Kettering Borough Council identified a number of sites, sufficient for local need, that can be purchased and that, if purchased, will be given planning permission only for Traveller sites? If he is, there should not be overcrowding, because there would be other sites for Travellers to go to. Overcrowding is surely a sign that there is not enough provision. If there were too few houses, the local plan would be rejected, unless the council identified sites that could be converted only to housing. Has Kettering Borough Council identified more sites for conversion only to Traveller sites, and for which it will not allow any other planning use? If it has not, surely it has under-provided in its local plan.

[Mr Hollobone]

Yes, there are two additional sites for Gypsies and Travellers with up to 16 plots that are not occupied. The problem is that more Gypsy and Traveller families are arriving from other areas all the time and are overloading the existing sites. It is simply not fair on the local community in Kettering to have to provide ever more provision for Gypsies and Travellers from across the country. That is why we need the planning system to work effectively, and why we need Gypsies and Travellers to respect the law.

The Government should ensure—I would like the Minister’s response to this—that someone in breach of an enforcement notice cannot apply for retrospective planning permission until that initial breach has been remedied. The Gypsies and Travellers who have moved into the site near Loddington, who have had a temporary and permanent stop notice served on them, should not be allowed to apply for retrospective planning permission until they have restored the field to its original state when they moved in on that Friday afternoon. That would be a real disincentive and would stop Gypsies and Travellers abusing the planning system in that way.

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[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir George. I congratulate the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing the debate. As he said, we are often here to debate this subject. My view is that he looks at the issue down the wrong end of the telescope, but then he probably thinks the same about me.

The hon. Gentleman quotes statistics, and I will probably quote some of the same statistics, but he draws the opposite conclusion from the one that I draw. I do not think there is any dispute that Gypsies and Travellers are not just a deprived community in this country, but possibly the most deprived community. Some of the statistics that apply to Gypsy and Traveller communities are quite horrific. Only 3% to 4% of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller population aged 18 to 30 go into higher education, compared with 43% of the general population; 90% of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller population have experienced racism; life expectancy at minimum is 10 to 12 years shorter than that for the general population; and the suicide rate in the Traveller community is six times higher than in the general population. Those are really shocking statistics.

The hon. Gentleman said that there are different people on whom the blame could be placed, or to whom the explanation could be ascribed, but that Gypsies and Travellers would need to bear some responsibility themselves. He said that planning policy or planning law discriminates in favour of Gypsies and Travellers, and he called for harsher remedies, including the implementation of the current consultation, which would criminalise trespass. I think that is the wrong analysis. Both the history of the planning process and the current situation suggest that the opposite is true: that there is discrimination against Gypsies and Travellers in the planning process; that it is more likely that applications from Gypsies and Travellers will be refused than from the general population; and that there is a large level of discrimination and hostility, which goes into the statutory sector as well. That is what needs to be challenged, first of all. Then, perhaps, we can come back to whether there is a continuing issue.

It is right that three quarters of Gypsies and Travellers are in bricks-and-mortar accommodation. A lot of those, even if not necessarily all, would like to continue with a nomadic lifestyle but do not have the opportunity. One reason why that has become institutionalised is a relatively recent change in definition, which effectively says—it is a Catch-22—that even if someone’s ethnicity is Gypsy or Traveller, if they stop travelling and end up, against their better wishes, in bricks-and-mortar accommodation, perhaps for reasons of health, perhaps because they need to settle in an area for education for a while, or perhaps just because of a lack of pitches or stopping sites, they are no longer counted for that purpose. Suddenly the assessed needs in any local authority area go down, because of that statistical change—perhaps by 60%, 70% or 80%. The issue is suddenly no longer there. It reminds me of how my local authority, when it was Conservative controlled, solved the housing issue by abolishing the waiting list. It is not a long-term solution; it simply hides a continuing problem.

We do not have time to go over the whole history of the provision of sites and the different policies adopted by different Governments over the past 50 years, which go back to the Caravan Sites Act 1968, but the change that was introduced in 1994, which for the first time removed a requirement for local authorities to provide sites, was a game changer. Without any national requirement, and now with the encouragement of national Government not to provide permanent or transit sites, local authorities simply do not provide those sites. There is a shortage. Whatever the hon. Gentleman may say, there is a lack of such provision. Until that is remedied in some way, stopping at sites that are not authorised will continue.

I have never met members of the Gypsy and Traveller community who want to stop on unauthorised sites where facilities are not provided, and who would not prefer negotiated stopping, transit sites or the ability to use permanent sites. It seems to be commonplace to say that that must be the case. Local authorities that take their responsibilities seriously and have tried to provide a remedy—most local authorities try to escape their obligations—have found that they have either no problem or a much reduced problem with that kind of stopping.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Let me give a pointed example. Since Brighton opened a transit site and expanded the permanent site, the number of encampments in unauthorised locations has reduced by almost half. Where they do happen, a negotiated move is often done within a day. That is an example of how we can solve the issue with a carrot rather than a stick.

[Andy Slaughter]

I could give a number of examples, but I am conscious of time.

The long debate, which is wearisome for everyone but particularly for Gypsy and Traveller communities, is about how we solve what is not a huge problem once it has been broken down by local authority area. The need for additional pitches and sites in this country will no doubt continue until we have a Government who can grasp that nettle. I am concerned that, while that rather sterile debate is going on, there is an increased attempt to vilify and criminalise the actions of Gypsies and Travellers. We saw that in the cross-borough injunctions that the Court of Appeal found to be unlawful, in a landmark judgment only last week—that was the Bromley case. It was no longer possible to stop anywhere in entire boroughs, some of which are very large. That was effectively a blanket ban that would have extended across parts of the country.

The attempt by the Government, through their consultation, to criminalise trespass in a way that goes far beyond what happens in Ireland, and without the compensatory duties to provide sites, is a regressive and intimidatory step. We need a change in approach, and we need to be constructive and positive. The last thing we need to be doing is further victimising Gypsy and Traveller communities.