Friends, Families and Travellers

Working on behalf of all Gypsies and Travellers regardless of ethnicity, culture or background

Guide to Planning

 

Introduction

A guide to the planning laws for Travellers and Gypsies including how to apply, planning and caravans, evictions under planning laws, and the mysteries of planning in England and Wales.

Travellers are probably unique in relation to the planning system in England and Wales. They are dependent, like all others, in needing planning permission for their dwellings - but unlike dwellers in houses, there is no significant market in sites which have planning permission and they experience extreme difficulty in obtaining planning permission for sites whether or not they have the finances necessary for purchasing a site.

From the point of view of Travellers, the planning process and system represents a very large obstacle to the fulfillment of their basic needs - i.e., a secure place to live, which provides for basic accommodation consistent with their ethnic or cultural needs. Planning does not enable- it hinders this group of people in attaining the most basic of human needs.

Certainly, planning should secure sustainable and equitable development. For Travellers this should mean a reasonable chance of gaining planning permission, at least as reasonable as the rest of the population, and also ensuring that there is a continuing supply of places for a population which does experience a certain amount of growth. Without this, it is difficult to see how a nomadic habit of life can continue in the UK or certainly one which remains within the law.

Who is a ‘Gypsy’ in Planning Terms

There are two different uses of the term ‘Gypsy’ in official terms. The first is as and distinct ethnic minority group as defined by the Race Relations Act. The second is in terms of planning. This definition relates back to the Caravan Sites and Development Act 1968, which was set in place as an attempt to solve the disparate problems faced by traditional Travellers at the time. This definition, based around the concept of those who had a nomadic habit of life, was later amended by a high court, and later an appeal court decision, to people who had a nomadic habit of life in which their wanderings were purposeful, for example in search of work. Many traditional Gypsies who continue to travel, Irish and Scots Travellers and increasing numbers of new Travellers, qualify in planning terms as ‘Gypsies’. This has been born out at a large number of local planning inquiries and confirmed by the Inspectors involved. Therefore, anyone who pursues a nomadic habit of life for economic purposes can argue that they are a ‘Gypsy’ in planning terms.

Government Circulars

A number of Government planning circulars have been issued in relation to planning and Gypsies.

Circular 1/94 Gypsy Sites and Planning was issued a the time of the debates leading up to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which tightened up the law on unauthorised camping. The Circular effectively reduced the opportunities for Travellers to obtain planning permission by explicitly excluding Green Belt as an area which might be considered as suitable for Gypsy sites, whilst purporting to aim to meet the needs of the nomadic population. This circular was followed later in the year by Circular 18/94, which dealt with unauthorised camping and local authority duties towards unauthorised camping and commended tolerance towards Gypsies camping in an unauthorised manner, other things being equal.

A more recent circular, 01/2006 ‘Planning for Gypsy and Traveller Sites’ issued at the beginning of 2006 sets out guidance on how local authorities should fulfil their obligations to meet the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers, imposed on them by the 2004 Housing Act. Follow this link to download the circular - Planning for Gypsies and Travellers

Why is Planning so important to Travellers?

There are a significant number of Travellers who have no legal place to stay - perhaps as many as 15-20,000 people (made up of about 10,000 Traditional Travellers and 3,000 new Travellers). Within the UK, when camped in an unauthorised manner, people are subject to eviction (when camped on land not owned by the Traveller concerned) or enforcement proceedings (when Travellers are camped on their own land without the benefit of planning permission) under various pieces of legislation - some of which (for example the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994) carry criminal sanctions such as imprisonment. This leads to severe insecurity amongst the people so affected. Whilst there are about 6,000 places on council run sites, the withdrawal of central government grants towards such sites and the then government’s policy of looking towards private provision means that the number of places is not likely to increase. Hence the burden of provision falls on private provision. The difficulties which face individual Travellers and family groups in gaining planning permission cannot be exaggerated.

Travellers and the Planning System

It is widely agreed that Travellers experience disproportionate difficulty when faced with gaining planning permission. This is due to the way the planning system operates, the extreme marginalisation of Travellers, prejudice against Travellers and official indifference to the position of this minority group.

Some research has been carried into the planning system as it relates to Travellers. A DOE (Dept. of the Environment) report in 1990 mentioned that the success rate of initial planning applications by Gypsies was about 10 per cent whilst 50 cases monitored in 1995 by FFT indicated a success rate for new applications (as opposed to changes of named persons) of 4 per cent. This appalling success rate means that, as a rule, Travellers have to have recourse to the appeal system, unlike the vast majority of the housed population. The success rate at appeal has fallen over the past number of years from 43.5% in 1990-91 to 37.5% in 1995-6 (Planning Inspectorate figures). An analysis of 107 appeals involving Gypsies and Travellers between late 1995 and mid 1997 was carried out by FFT (Planning Appeals and Gypsies and Travellers, FFT 1998) showed that the overall success rate at appeal was 34%.

However, half of the successful appeals were for limited periods (temporary permissions) and over half of all permissions were granted on the basis of personal need rather than because of the needs of this minority group as a whole. The fact that the majority of Travellers have to go through the appeals system to meet their basic needs calls into question the fairness of the planning system. Preparing a case for appeal calls on skills which few Travellers have (the illiteracy rate amongst traditional Travellers in particular mitigates dealing successfully with paperwork) and the costs are often very large. Many years of stress and strain are often involved - one group spent 12 years and many thousands of pounds before they managed to get planning permission. The effects on individuals of the stress of the planning process has led to marriage break up, depression based illness, despair and gross insecurity, impacting particularly on children. All of these effects have been personally witnessed by the author of this report over the past few years.

When viewed against the background level of success for all planning applications of some 80% (source PPG1), these figures are disturbing. Assuming that one of the functions of the planning system is to ensure that peoples basic needs (e.g., housing) are satisfied, it is clear that with a minimum of one third of Travellers having nowhere legal to stay, the planning system seems to have failed Travellers to a remarkable degree.

Certainly, most planning authorities seem willing and able to turn down almost every planning application from a Gypsy and Traveller. Prejudicial and racist statements are common from individual members of planning committees, whilst too often very little help is given to individual Travellers from planning officers, despite advice contained in Circular 1/94 that practical advice and assistance should be given by local authorities.

Planning Policy and Travellers

The failure of mainstreaming of Gypsy sites policy can be seen in the many Gypsy sites policies which have been developed by local authorities since the advent of Circular 1/94. The circular effectively requires that local authorities have policies and research by ACERT (A Directory of planning policies for Gypsy site provision in England Mark Wilson, The Policy press 1998) points to problems with the intended mainstreaming of Gypsy site provision within the planning system. In particular the research points out that criteria based policies are overwhelmingly used. Such policies have on average 5 criteria and only 35% of criteria based policies have a presumption of planning permission if criteria are met. The others say that permission may be granted or that the authority will take account of the criteria. The report also said that the proportion of all authorities which have unambiguous, adopted, criteria based policies is very small, which means there is very little certainty for the Gypsy population. Only 19% of local authorities can be said to provide any sort of certainty for the Gypsy population. Certainly the author’s own experience in dealing with planning applications, appeals and planning policy suggests that most criteria based policies are capable of being interpreted in such a way that almost any piece of land within a district can be excluded from the possibility of use as a Gypsy site. The ACERT research points out that the year on year percentage increase in the number of private authorised caravans for 1996 was 2.8%, the second lowest in 10 years. It also states that the success rate for appeals has dropped from a high point of 55% in 1985 to 25% currently.

Planning policy development and provision for Gypsy and Traveller sites in England (PDF).
A year after Circular 1/2006 was issued FFT thought it would be useful to see how much progress had been made by local planning authorities to make provision and what plans they had made for Gypsy and Traveller accommodation. It was decided to make a postal survey of key local authorities and follow this up with a trawl through their websites to identify their plans through published Local Development Schemes (LDS). It was hoped that such a survey would enable progress to be gauged and ascertain likely completion times of the planning process to meet the large unmet need for caravan sites for Gypsies and Travellers.

Further Links:

convert this post to pdf.