Gypsy and Traveller Sites

I will call Mr Philip Hollobone to move the motion and will then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered planning policy for Gypsy and Traveller sites.

It is a delight to see you in the Chair, Ms Rees. I thank Mr Speaker for granting me permission for this debate, and I welcome the Minister to his place. I also thank him for visiting Kettering to discuss this issue on 8 February.

The purpose of the debate is to make it clear to the Minister that we need changes to the legislative framework for Gypsy and Traveller pitch provision, unauthorised development, and licensing and management of Gypsy and Traveller sites. It will be frustrating for residents in my constituency that I will not be able to go into detail in this debate about specific local sites, because various forms of planning enforcement and legal action are under way. I will highlight in passing Oakley Park and Peasdale Hill in Middleton in the neighbouring Corby constituency, and sites in my own constituency at Loddington, Broughton, Braybrooke, Stoke Albany and Desborough.

I will also highlight controversy locally over a proposed Traveller stopping site at Rothwell, which is to deal with the slightly separate issue of unauthorised encampments under Home Office provisions. I appreciate that is not the direct responsibility of the Local Government Minister in front of us today. To deal with that one first, under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, as amended by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, section 62A allows a senior police officer to direct those in an unauthorised encampment, consisting of at least one vehicle and caravan, to leave land upon which it does not have permission to be, if the local authority can provide a suitable pitch elsewhere in the area. My view is that a senior officer should be able to direct them to leave the local authority area, without the local authority having to provide alternative provision.

Over the past number of years as my constituency’s elected representative, I have had to deal with this issue on some occasions, as has the council. Does the hon. Member agree that it is essential that local community planning and provision goes hand in hand with the right for Travellers and Gypsies to have the freedom to live as they culturally and historically have done, and that perhaps sensitivity is the best way forward?

The hon. Gentleman brings me to my next point. The Government’s planning policy for Traveller sites sets out national planning policies for Gypsies and Travellers. It states:

“The Government’s overarching aim is to ensure fair and equal treatment for travellers in a way that in a way that facilitates their traditional and nomadic way of life while respecting the interests of the settled community.”

My contention is that fair and equal treatment goes both ways. In my assessment, the current planning policy enables Gypsies and Travellers to develop sites in the countryside that members of the settled community would simply not be able to develop under the same planning regulations. Although the aim of the policy is fair and equal treatment, it actually amounts to preferential treatment for Gypsies and Travellers.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Another unfairness in the planning system is that it penalises those local authority areas that have traditionally provided a large number of pitches. They are having to provide so many more because the duty to co-operate with other local authorities means that those with literally zero pitches do not have to take them on. That needs to be addressed, because the same local authorities are being asked to make all the provision and that is not sustainable.

As always, my right hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. There is an unfairness in the system that penalises authorities that stick to the rules. They then find that they have to make even greater provision for more and more Gypsy and Traveller sites.

First, I should declare an interest as a serving Somerset councillor. Somerset Council, like all local authorities, has the power to take enforcement action where appropriate. However, decisions that were made by the previous, Conservative administration in Somerset have left the county without any appropriate transit sites. Regardless of the intent of the council, the costs involved in developing those transit sites, like any other planning development and homebuilding, are now that much greater. Does the hon. Member agree that local authorities need more provision to take action when necessary?

If the hon. Lady is talking about temporary Traveller stopping sites, I highlighted those in my opening remarks. Under the present law, local authorities are encouraged to provide temporary stopping sites so that Gypsies and Travellers who have temporary unauthorised encampments can be moved out of a local authority area only if such transit provision has been made. I would argue that that should be unnecessary, and that they should be required to move out of the area in any case, just like anyone in the settled community if they were parked up temporarily on somebody else’s land.

I know that the hon. Gentleman is a fair-minded person, so may I suggest to him that the balance actually goes the other way? He might be aware of the case of Smith v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, which was handed down yesterday and granted a declaration of incompatibility under the European convention on human rights. It said that there is a lack of lawful stopping places for Gypsies and Travellers, and unless the Government increase provision, the law as currently drafted will amount to unjustified race discrimination. For example, only eight out of 68 local authorities in the south-east of England have identified the land needed for Gypsies and Travellers in their area. It is the lack of sites that is at the root of the problem, not unfair treatment that benefits Gypsies and Travellers.

As always, the hon. Gentleman and I totally differ on these issues. I would argue that we should withdraw from the European convention on human rights and amend the Human Rights Act 1998, because it is simply absurd that public authorities should be spending millions of pounds to develop stopping sites for Gypsies and Travellers. The pressure on the public purse is already enormous without adding to it.

I am also in complete opposition to the hon. Gentleman’s long-standing views. The reality is that there is disgracefully unjust discrimination against Gypsies and Travellers in planning processes. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) just touched on yesterday’s High Court ruling about the ECHR. I ask the hon. Member to read the excellent research from Friends, Families and Travellers, which clearly evidences the reluctance and failure of local authorities to ensure that socially rented sites are created, and rightly calls on the Government to reintroduce a statutory duty to ensure that the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers are met.

The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised that I totally disagree.

I thank the House of Commons Library for the excellent briefing it published today, ahead of this debate. To put this into context, in July 2023, local authorities counted over 25,000 caravans on Gypsy and Traveller sites in England. That is a 21% increase in the last 10 years. Of those caravans, 26% were on public sites, 60% were on authorised private sites, and 14% were on unauthorised sites. Of the unauthorised sites, most—83%—were on land owned by Gypsies and Travellers, and 17% were unauthorised encampments on land belonging to private landowners or public authorities. The focus of this debate, with particular reference to Kettering and north Northamptonshire, is the 14% of unauthorised sites as well as the abuse of the conditions laid down in the grant of planning permission for authorised, private sites.

Locally in Kettering, North Northamptonshire Council is committed to meeting the needs of the Gypsy and Traveller community and addressing the challenges that it faces. A Gypsy and Traveller local plan is in preparation and quarterly meetings occur with interested local parish councils. I praise Councillor David Howes, who is the North Northamptonshire Council portfolio holder for Gypsies and Travellers, and George Candler, who is the deputy chief executive on North Northamptonshire Council, for facilitating those extremely useful meetings, which were positive and focused on providing suitable Gypsy and Traveller provision as well as addressing unauthorised encampments and the unlawful development of sites.

The suggestions I will outline in the next five to 10 minutes have emerged from the meeting that the Minister kindly attended in Kettering on 8 February, which was attended by council officers and representatives from local parish councils. Those suggestions are about how the current law encumbers local planning authorities in effectively enforcing the system.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He has touched on a key point. Does he agree that one of the problems is that planning guidance differs so much from local authority to local authority and in how it is applied? For example, City of York Council, which covers my constituency’s planning guidance, has been all over the place recently on the issue. It has looked at expanding existing sites, and when that has not worked it has moved to look at forcing local developers to add one to two pitches for every new development that comes forward. That is opposed by the local Traveller community and local communities, so the policy is just not working. We must find a better way of taking it forward.

I am grateful for that useful intervention, because it is clear that the planning system around Gypsy and Traveller provision has so many holes in it and simply is not working. It is certainly not working for my hon. Friend’s constituents, and it is not working for mine, either.

A commonly seen pattern of behaviour is for Travellers to buy a plot of land, move in over a bank holiday weekend, strip off the topsoil and have a queue of tipper lorries arrive at the site to drop off hardcore. By the end of the weekend, hardstanding is down and caravans occupy the site, with no immediate action to stop them. Legal wrangles then follow through the planning process for perhaps the next three to four years or even longer, with enforcement, planning applications, appeals and so on. Most of the unauthorised developments in my local area deal with Gypsies and Travellers who have purchased the land, so they are not trespassers, and it can be difficult for the local authority to evidence at what point development actually occurred that is sufficient to serve a stop notice. That is particularly problematic in the early stages, when no residential occupation of the land has actually started.

The Minister will be aware that local councils cannot serve a stop notice on the basis of something that may occur but need to be able to confirm a permanent breach of the planning regulations—in other words, when residential occupation has occurred. Of course, once residential occupation has occurred, it is then more difficult to address. As the council is then involved in removing occupants from their home, they claim that they have nowhere else to go. It is not suitable to camp them at the roadside with young children, and it becomes difficult for the local council to dispute. A local authority, quite rightly under the current law—although I think that needs to be amended—must take note of human rights issues, protected characteristics and so on, especially if Travellers are recognised as an ethnic group in law.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) for securing the debate and for giving us the opportunity, even for just a few short minutes, to talk about these important issues. Most importantly, I thank him and his colleagues for the kindness they showed me when I visited Northamptonshire a couple of months ago to talk about this issue at his invitation. He works closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) and I was grateful for the attention, support and explanation given by many of the parish councils in my hon. Friends’ area. They came to the meeting, giving us the opportunity to go through this in the detail it deserves. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering for the debate and for that opportunity a couple of months ago to talk about the issue in detail.

As with all issues of planning, I have to put a caveat on the front of my remarks: I am not able to talk about specific local plans, specific local planning applications or, indeed, enforcement action against those planning applications. As right hon. and hon. Members are aware, planning Ministers have a quasi-judicial role in the planning system, and must therefore reserve comments on any individual application, in case that needs to be exercised. I know that my hon. Friend is not asking me for information, or for my thoughts, on individual applications, but seeking to articulate his concerns about the policy in general, which I will focus on.

This area of policy is obviously sensitive. It has been debated reasonably today, in the short time that we have had, but we can see the contours of a broader debate where people take, legitimately, different views. I will try to choose my words carefully, and it may be that I am not able to go as far as I might otherwise wish to in certain areas, but I hope that it demonstrates that I am engaging in the issue. I will say more when I am able to in future. I should put on the record that I have historical experience in my constituency of challenges in this part of planning policy, so I am aware of it from the perspective of North East Derbyshire.

On that issue of site availability, I recommend the Friends, Families and Travellers report to the Minister and to the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), “Kicking the can down the road: The planning and provision of Gypsy and Traveller sites in England 1960-2023”. It explains the lack of site provision, which is at the root of the judgment in Smith yesterday that led to the declaration of incompatibility. The Minister has now had 24 hours to consider the judgment and I wonder about the Government response. They will have to deal with the issue—and the law at the moment—which stems from the fact of discrimination, with certain parts of the criminal law being impacted where there is not sufficient site provision in a particular area at the moment.