New rules will ban Gypsy camps from green belt land in bid to avoid repeat of Dale Farm eviction battle

From the Daily mail

Travellers will be barred from settling on green belt land to prevent a re-run of battles such as the £7million eviction of the Dale Farm Travellers.

Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has acted because his advice to councils to only allow green belt developments in ‘very special circumstances’ is not being followed.

In future, planning officials must give ‘particular scrutiny’ to allowing caravan sites to blight England’s beauty spots and concentrate them in other areas, he said.

Mr Pickles said he would personally decide a number of appeals against these sites over the next six months.

He also took the axe to politically correct planning rules - which required councils to consider the ‘diversity’ of the area when allowing developments.

A 186-page guidance document issued to councils in 2005 called ‘Diversity and Equality in Planning’ would be cancelled, his department announced in a written statement last night.

The new rules are intended to prevent a repeat of the forcible clearance of Dale Farm, once the UK’s largest Traveller sites, on green belt land in Crays Hill, Essex.

It followed a 10-year legal wrangle with Basildon Council, which in 2011 mobilised hundreds of police and bailiffs to clear the site as the residents fought back.

In another case - in the village of Meriden, Warwickshire - Travellers were evicted from an illegal camp on eight acres of green belt last year, only after local residents kept a round-the-clock vigil over them - for three years.

There are believed to be dozens of other Traveller sites on green belt in England, allowed by councils under rules which call for them to act on ‘unmet demand’ for housing.

Despite guidance from the Coalition last year that the green belt should have the highest level of protection, they have continued to be allowed and infuriated local communities.

Some Traveller groups, like those at Dale Farm, use a ruse whereby they buy the land, then develop it and applying for ‘retrospective planning permission’.

Planning minister Brandon Lewis said this guidance ‘failed to strike the correct balance’ between the background of someone making an application and the effect on the area.

It also required too many ‘intrusive’ lifestyle questionnaires for residents, and required councils to issue ‘expensive and bureaucratic’ Equality Impact Assessments, he said.

This document advises councils to translate some of their guidance on planning into other languages which Mr Lewis said ‘undermines integration by discouraging people from learning English, weakens community cohesion and a common British identity and wastes taxpayers’ money’.

He added: ‘Under the last administration’s flawed rules a sense of unfairness was embedded in the planning system.

‘Unauthorised developments created tensions between Travellers and the settled population, whilst some community groups were given favoured treatment.

‘That approach has harmed community cohesion. We want to address the balance and put fairness back into local communities.’

It is not clear what effect this guidance will have on areas of countryside which are not in the green belt.

Earlier this year, ministers ordered councils to increase the number of authorised sites for Gypsy families in appropriate areas, and given financial incentives to do so.

Without action, the numbers of illegal caravan sites would almost double from 2,400 in 2010 to 4,500 by 2015, the Department for Communities and Local Government claimed.

see aslo DEPARTMENT FOR COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT - WRITTEN MINISTERIAL STATEMENT Planning and Travellers (pdf)

TCPA - Planning must not ignore equality