Gypsy and Traveller Policy

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mrs Riordan, to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing this debate. It is clear that he and other hon. Members who have spoken care passionately about this matter and have sought to bring forward issues affecting their constituencies.

It has been suggested that primary legislation should be altered, but whatever is done, the needs of the Gypsy and Traveller community must be assessed and land must be allocated to meet their needs. The Minister may be surprised to hear me say that much of the March 2012 planning policy framework would address many of the issues that hon. Members have raised today if it were implemented for Gypsies and Travellers.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) and the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), who is no longer in his place, for their extremely measured and thoughtful contributions, which sought to balance the practical problems facing Gypsies and Travellers with the difficulty of securing enough sites to meet their needs.

I will briefly outline what the Labour Government did. I will not go as far back in history as the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire did, but it is important to say where we are. As the Library briefing note outlines, the Labour Government pressured councils to make adequate provision for Gypsies and Travellers, partly through the Housing Act 2004 and partly through regional spatial strategies and local plans. That required local authorities, when reviewing housing needs in their area, to examine specifically the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers residing in or resorting to their district. That was important because of the need to identify permanent and temporary sites.

Planning policy guidance circular 1/2006 put an obligation on local authorities to identify land in what are now local plans for three reasons: to enable Gypsies, Travellers and Irish Travellers to buy land and to develop sites; to enable registered council landlords to apply to the Housing Corporation for funds to develop sites; and for the Secretary of State to intervene, when necessary, to ensure that land is identified. The consensus seemed to be that that was making councils and communities find suitable land and that there were increasing opportunities for children to enter schooling. Some of the issues that have been addressed today were starting to be met.

Despite the coalition Government’s removal of regional spatial strategies, there is still an expectation that local authorities will make adequate provision for Gypsies and Travellers in their area. The March 2012 planning policy framework states that local planning authorities should make their own assessment of housing needs and sites for Travellers, and many hon. Members today made a powerful case for that need to be assessed objectively.

Local planning authorities should work collaboratively to develop fair and effective strategies and should be encouraged to plan for sites over a reasonable time scale, to protect the green belt, to encourage more private provision, to introduce measures to reduce unauthorised development and encampments, to have realistic and inclusive policies and to take action to reduce tension between settled and Gypsy and Traveller communities.

The policy raises several questions that I hope the Minister will answer today. What will happen if the local authority’s assessment of Gypsy and Traveller need is unsatisfactory and results in too little or too much land or too few or too many sites? How will he know that? What will happen if, as the hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms) mentioned, local authorities do not work collaboratively to develop effective strategies to meet needs, and what mechanisms will enable them to do that? What sanctions will apply if they do not work together and, again, how will he know that?

What is a reasonable time scale? How will it be obvious and what will be the mechanisms if private Traveller site provision is not adequate, or is proving problematic in the range of ways that hon. Members outlined? How will the Department for Communities and Local Government monitor the number of unauthorised developments and encampments, and what action will be taken to address that? How many local authorities have developed realistic and inclusive policies, and how are they evaluated?

How many additional Gypsy and Traveller sites have been provided since the March 2012 planning policy framework? How is the Department supporting initiatives to reduce tension between the settled and the Gypsy and Traveller communities, which are important given some of the comments this morning? Is the Department monitoring the use of rural exception site policy and if not, given that it is specifically mentioned in the guidance, what action will the Minister take?

Hon. Members will realise that I have little quarrel with the policy in the 2012 planning policy framework and guidance. It is right that we should have a more localist approach to determining need for the Gypsy and Traveller community and try to get local communities and councils to be reasonable in meeting that need. However, I would like to know how the Government’s policy is working in practice, and how they can be assured that that need is being met.

Research published in The Independent in March 2012 stated:

“The Government is underestimating the demand for new Gypsy and Traveller sites, exacerbating the already dire shortage and making ‘a future Dale Farm inevitable’”.

In January 2013, the Homes and Communities Agency announced grants of £47 million for 170 improved pitches and 620 new ones in schemes throughout the country, but it seems that fewer than 300 new pitches are likely to be built before 2015, and that by then funding may not be available. Many identified sites simply do not get planning permission.

We seem to be concentrating on sites that are inappropriately located, sometimes in the green belt and sometimes where problems arise for local communities, but the Minister and his colleagues must tell us where sites will be and how to facilitate local authorities and communities to meet existing needs in their area and to do so within an inclusive framework. No one is saying that that is easy. The issues are difficult, as the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire outlined. However, the complexity of the issues must be reflected not only in national guidance but in local strategies and actions. Monitoring is necessary so that we know what is and is not working and so that best practice can be shared. I do not see the Minister or his Department doing any of that at the moment.

There is a striking mismatch between need and where the money has gone, with few applications from London, the east, the south-east and the north-west. Essex, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Surrey and Hertfordshire had the most Gypsies and Travellers but were awarded only 4% of funding between them. The information we have suggests that the Minister should take action, and I would be grateful for answers to the specific points I have raised this morning.