Gypsy and Traveller Planning

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. The fact that that there are not enough authorised sites is a significant challenge to local authorities.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

Does not my hon. Friend agree that the point being made about Travellers and Gypsies also applies to settled organisations? In one area of my constituency, it is difficult to find land to build on, let alone to put caravans on. We need a balanced approach.

[Priti Patel]

I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. There is no doubt that this is about balance across all our communities. I shall refer to two other cases before I talk about the consultation.

My constituency has had endless cases. In Tolleshunt Knights, a planning application was made for a site for travelling show people in a wholly unsuitable location, but again Maldon district council’s decision was overturned by the Planning Inspectorate on the basis of the requirements in the current planning circulars. The council rightly pursued a localist agenda while the Planning Inspectorate remained wedded to the paradigm of centralist command and control. As the Minister will know from the substantive correspondence I sent to the Secretary of State about the case, it was badly handled by the Planning Inspectorate, which clearly showed no regard for the Government’s planning policies as laid down in the coalition programme for government. There is a problem with the Planning Inspectorate.

The final case is about Lea lane in Braxted, where a planning application for a Gypsy site is pending and is with the Planning Inspectorate. The development is clearly inappropriate for the area, but there are concerns that the Planning Inspectorate, which has form, will grant permission on the basis of the applicant’s arguments about limited site provision and, again, human rights, despite serious question marks over the validity of the application and a series of irregularities that have been pointed out. While it is under consideration, I ask the Minister to do everything in his power to ensure that the Planning Inspectorate fully and comprehensively reviews the representations made by Maldon district council and the local community. It would be shocking and appalling if the Planning Inspectorate continued to progress applications and grant permissions for all the wrong reasons.

Many Members have mentioned a common theme that councils and communities still have their hands tied by previous targets, and it seems that the Planning Inspectorate values the human rights of one group over the rights of the settled community. That has created an unsustainable planning system full of problems, which is a big problem because our communities do not trust the system: they have no faith and confidence in it, so they automatically feel discriminated against; and if they do not have a voice, they do not feel represented. Our communities are left feeling pretty disfranchised and our councils feel powerless to act. There is a challenge for the Government, because they have a strong localism agenda that this problem could undermine.

Those are the reasons why we are here and why the system needs substantial reform. I am strongly in favour of giving local communities greater say and ensuring that their voices are heard. At the last general election, I was pleased to stand on my party’s manifesto, which would have addressed many of those fundamental problems through the pledge to give communities greater control over planning, to limit appeals to the Planning Inspectorate and to return decision-making powers on housing and planning to local councils. “Open Source Planning” highlighted that the Conservatives’ would take action in government to ensure fairness between the settled and the Traveller communities. We need to start to address the problem.

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[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I shall try to be quick, and will concentrate mostly—directly or indirectly—on enforcement. The Minister can turn to his page on enforcement, so he will be ready.

One thing that I like about the consultation, which has been mentioned already, is the sentence:

“Many people think that current planning policy treats traveller sites more favourably than it does other housing and that it is easier for one group of people to gain planning permission particularly on Green Belt land.”

Hear, hear. In my area, Surrey, 87% of the land is green belt. The situation is difficult for Travellers and Traveller sites, and it is also difficult for the settled community. My constituency has a number of official Gypsy sites. There are few or no problems, and the Gypsies are part of the community. Everything is settled and clear. We have two planning authorities in my constituency, Mole Valley and Guildford. Because we are close to Epsom downs we have trouble, particularly with Gypsies who come in from across a little patch of water, with a distinct accent—not mine; not even similar. They come and squat.

The Travellers tend to use expert legal advice. There are a couple of agencies involving solicitors that are expert in such matters, and they are paid for by Travellers’ groups. They enable the Travellers to become the Artful Dodgers of the planning system. One of the techniques, in some of the better areas of my constituency, is to purchase a patch of land where there is no hope of any form of planning permission for residence. Either Travellers or people pretending to be Travellers make those applications, forcing the locals to panic, club together and purchase the land at an outrageous price. If enforcement were sure, and those local people knew that the inevitable refusal of the application would be followed by enforcement that really happened, those scams would fall apart.

The second technique that I want to mention is squatting, something which the Government are, I understand, looking at. Squatting in rural areas is done by Travellers. They do not squat in buildings, but they bring their buildings with them and squat on the land with caravans and so on. In my area, they also squat on the land with their animals—horses. The difficulty is that at the moment when the bailiffs arrive, after a court order has been obtained, at least one mare, if not every one in the paddock, is about to give birth. A human would be put in an ambulance and whisked off to a maternity ward, but if the bailiffs approach a mare that is about to give birth, the rules apparently require the animal to be left there. Whether a birth happens or not is highly speculative—I am quite sure that it does not. However, what happens is that some of the farmers in my constituency—I know of one in particular—cannot use the land, because it is occupied by a couple of dozen horses.

When, finally, enforcement happens, the mess that is generally left behind is unbelievable. Perhaps the way the site is left could be included in consideration of the matter, so the people pushed off by the enforcement order pay for the removal, clean-up and restoration of the site. That would be helpful and might encourage many of those who cover the site with gravel and other things not to do so.

The third technique is to buy the land, generally with cash, from whatever source. That generally happens at the weekend, when the people arrive with caravans, trucks, bulldozers, loads of gravel, piping and so on. By the end of Sunday, they are installed. The electricity and water are tapped in, whether legally or not, and then the nonsense starts—hopeless applications, refusals, appeals and more refusals. To be fair, the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol has been quite good in my area and has backed the local authority, mainly. However, when the enforcement notices are delivered, there is an appeal against the notice. Then, as the Minister is obviously well aware, another, subtly different, application is put in. On and on it continues.

As has been mentioned, the people concerned do not pay council tax or taxes. They use the local system—the schools, health authorities, and so on—and the arguments start. The neighbourhood barneys are horrendous—there are accusations of theft and burglary—but I must be fair; I am sure that in one case, although the people who committed the crime might have been associated with the people on the site, they were not people from the site. Nevertheless, there is, to put it mildly, community disharmony.

I want to outline two cases. The first is in Guildford on the A246. It is a greenfield pasture, which is fenced in. There have been three applications and three refusals, and at least two failed appeals. There are two derelict caravans on the site. As one hon. Member has mentioned, the council are wondering whether it should bother with its enforcement notice, because the cost will be astronomical and it can imagine that, once it gets part of the way there, another application will be made, and it will be back to square one. We need that side of enforcement to be pushed.

[Andrew George]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about planning in general, although not particularly about Gypsy encampments; those who want to abuse the planning system often use the ruse of making retrospective applications, then appealing, and then reapplying, exactly as he has described. It is a weakness of the planning system, which is not necessarily the issue before the Chamber.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I noticed the nature and the subject of the debate, and have not strayed, although the hon. Gentleman has.

Anyone trying to sell or improve their property finds a big sign on the A246, which is the main road, saying “Romany Stables”. Opportunities to sell property have fallen in number because of that apparent threat. The situation is becoming disgraceful.

The second case involves a Gypsy who does not live in Mole Valley. He lives many miles away and used to—he probably still does—drive a lovely Rolls-Royce. He bought greenfield pasture land in the green belt. He sold it to his wife, who sold it to her cousin, who sold it too, and on it goes. Finally, a small group moved in there in the way in which I have described: gravel, electricity and water were built in over the weekend. There were five caravans, one of which looks like two mobile homes linked together. There was the usual pattern of enforcement notices, appeals and planning applications. The last appeal was quite a clever one. The order was to allow temporary accommodation, while the local authority looked for alternative sites over a period of time.

My concern is my local authority. I am worried that, having looked—not very well and in a limited area—and weighed up the fact that a sympathy that has no grounds in planning is being generated, the local authority may use a sympathy consideration, not a planning consideration, and allow the application on a greenfield site to go ahead. If someone such as the local farmer had built a house on that site, it would have been bulldozed—even though his children go to the local school and use the local hospital and doctor’s service—but that has not happened in this case because, as insinuated by the first sentence I read out, such groups are perceived to have an opportunity and a right that the rest of us do not. I ask the Minister to have a look before my local authority stubs its toes and gives permission, to the fury of many of us.

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[Chris Williamson]

We are very clear that there is a need for some improvement in the present situation, which does create difficulties. As I pointed out, the previous Administration took significant steps forward. However, we welcome the consultation exercise in which the present Government are engaged and we will fully co-operate with them when that has concluded. I do not want to state firmly that our position is one thing or another at this stage, because we need to wait for the outcome of the consultation. It would be wrong to prejudge what the outcome will be. It might be that helpful improvements could be made, but I do not want to say that we must stick steadfastly with the existing arrangement, or that we should do x, y or z, until we know the outcome of the consultation.

I probably do not have time to deal with all the other points that were made, but I shall touch on a few. The hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) referred to the need for stronger enforcement. Yes, of course there should be enforcement, but until we deal with the root cause of why unauthorised encampments are established in the first place, there will probably always be a need to undertake enforcement, however strong it is. There will always be unlawful encampments unless there is an adequate provision of legitimate, authorised encampments for the Travelling community.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I pointed out earlier that the settled community also occasionally tries to do exactly what has been described, and the enforcement goes through quickly and the buildings are knocked down. However, the deviousness with which the planning system is manipulated by the Travelling community in relation to some of the sites in my constituency, where there is a considerable demand from both that community and the settled community, means that it persists beyond what is acceptable.

[Chris Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point to which the consultation exercise and the Government will need to respond.

I am delighted by the damascene conversion of the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) on the importance of the regional spatial strategies, so I hope that the Government will recognise that.

I concurred with the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), who made the very helpful comment that not all Travellers are bad. There is sometimes a dangerous tendency for people to misinterpret these debates and to caricature hon. Members as suggesting that everyone in the Travelling community is a rogue and a bad person—clearly that is not the case. I was delighted that the hon. Gentleman made that comment from the other side of the Chamber.

I conclude by reiterating that we await with interest the outcome of the consultation exercise. We will co-operate fully with the Government when the relevant documentation has been published.