Buying Land
Legally correct 2003
Getting planning permission for a residential Gypsy/Traveller site is never easy, no matter where you live, and will usually require a good few years of applications and appeals before any final decision is reached. Even if you are successful at appeal, you may only get temporary permission (usually between 3 and 5 years). So the first thing to bear in mind is that nothing will happen quickly and you must be prepared to commit considerable time, effort and money, with the possibility that you will fail, despite all your efforts.
However, it is not impossible and there are more planning cases succeeding today than ever before. There are a lot of very dedicated professionals working with Travellers to help them secure planning permission and many of their services are free or priced at a reduced rate.
You will first have to locate a piece of land on which you want to live. When looking for land, these are some things to bear in mind:
1. Try to find a place that is not, for example, in the Green Belt, in an Area
of Special Scientific Interest or in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The best type of land is a ‘brown field’ site (that means a piece of land that has already had buildings or development on it), but open
Countryside is also alright. You can find out how land is classified by going to the local authority and asking to see the Local and Structure Plans. These should set out all the land classifications in the area. You then need to find the area where the piece of land you want to have a site on is, and see where it falls in the plans.
2. Ideally, the site should be well screened. This means any caravans or mobile homes should not be visible from any direction - either from the road, other houses, roads or locations that might overlook the site from
a nearby hill, etc… If it is visible, this can often be reduced by landscaping (although it is a good idea to use trees and bushes that grow naturally in the area already, rather than planting conifer hedges for instance), where you put the caravans/mobile homes and by painting them or their roofs green or some other colour that makes them blend in more.
3. The site should be close to local amenities. This means reasonably close (usually within 3 to 5 miles) to shops, public transport, schools, etc…
4. It is very important that the site has a safe entrance and exit. There are very strict Highway regulations about visibility at the entrance/exit to sites to ensure there is no danger of accidents and this is very important.
5. The land should be in an area where you have a local connection. For example, you have lived there for a long time, you have close family there, your children attend the local school or you are registered with local doctors.
6. The site should either already have services provided to it or be able to have them installed. This means mainly water and sewage. If the site doesn’t already have these, then you will need to look into if it is possible to provide them and how much it will cost.
7. You need to check if the site is in an area that has a history of flooding.
8. Noise can also be something to consider. For example, if it is located near an airport or motorway.
9. Do you carry out any business that is likely to increase the amount of traffic on an off the site beyond what a family would create and will any work create noise or nuisance?
Once you find a piece of land that you think you could live on, you will need to put in a planning application. With regards to costs, the initial fee of applying for planning permission is around £200, depending on the local authority. Up until recently, there has been no way to get funding to help pay for this. However, the Travellers Aid Trust has just launched a small grants programme for Travellers, of grants up to £250 and will consider applications to assist Travellers applying for planning permission. If you need more information about this, please visit the TAT website: www.travellersaidtrust.org.
There are many individuals and organisations that are willing to help Travellers fill in planning application forms and speak to the local authority on their behalf, including FFT.
The most likely outcome will be that your application will fail. You must expect this and expect to have to appeal against the decision. If you are on any benefits, like Income Support or Jobseekers Allowance, you may be entitled to Legal Aid. This is very important as this is where things can get expensive - that is, not counting the cost of the land, any landscaping you do and any services you might put in. You need to think about all of this before you even begin.
If you are not able to get Legal Aid to help you with the appeal, it is likely to cost you several thousand pounds at the very least. Some professionals and agencies will offer their support for free or at a reduced rate to help keep the cost down, but it will still be expensive. If you are entitled to Legal Aid, you will not have to pay.
Once you are through to the appeal stage, your chances of success get much better, although nothing is guaranteed. Your best chance of success at the appeal stage is if you have strong personal circumstances. This usually includes things like the fact that you have nowhere else to go (no other sites available to you) or you need to stay in the area for health and/or education reasons (your children attend the local school, you are registered with the doctor or you work locally).
You will also need to establish that you have ‘Gypsy status’. This doesn’t just mean that you are an ethnic Gypsy or Irish Traveller, but that you are also a Gypsy in planning terms. In planning law, anyone is a Gypsy if they travel for work. In other words, if they do seasonal work on farms, travel to fairs to trade, and things like that. However, don’t panic if you don’t as this definition is changing all the time and it also depends on whether the local authority accepts that you are Travellers.
If they say you are not Gypsies in planning terms, you will need to show that you come from a Traveller background (that your grandparents and parents were Travellers and live a Traveller life) and that you still travel yourself. This can just mean that you go travelling to see family or to weddings and funerals and to fairs throughout the year. But you must show that you do still travel, even if it is not as much as your parents or grandparents might have.
If you are housed, you will need to show that you have a strong cultural aversion to living in a house. Things that help to show this would be that you were born in a trailer/caravan, you were brought up on the road or on sites, you have never lived in a house before, you were forced to move into housing because you had no other choices open to you, and/or you are having problems living in a house (such as suffering from stress, discrimination from neighbours, your children are being bullied). If any of these things are happening, You will need to prove it by providing letters from doctors, schools, or the police to support your case.
You will also need to show that you cannot move back onto any other existing legal site. This means checking to see if there are any pitches on local authority sites in the area. If there are pitches free, you would need to show that you could not move onto these pitches because of problems you have or might have if you did. This would have to be quite serious, such as a major dispute with another family, threats of violence or actual attacks. In most cases, there are no pitches available and very long waiting lists, but you will need to check this out.
The final thing to remember is that every case is different and must be looked at separately. There are no hard and fast rules and anything is possible.
Susan Alexander
Travellers Aid Trust, 2003
convert this post to pdf.
