Tory MPs call for revision of Traveller and Gypsy planning legislation

From Inside Housing

Conservative MPs this week called for ‘special planning provisions’ for Travellers and Gypsies to be removed.

At the debate Andrew Selous organised in Westminster Hall on Tuesday, the Conservative MP for South West Bedfordshire said to Brandon Lewis, under-secretary of state for Communities and Local Government, that the current ‘twin-track’ planning system ‘greatly threatens and undermines community cohesion and causes significant fear, distrust and upset to both Travellers and settled residents’.

He asked the minister to ‘introduce primary legislation to deal with the situation in the forthcoming queen’s speech and, in the interim, immediately to lower the 3 per cent net household formation annual growth requirement for Gypsies and Travellers to around 1.5 per cent, as I do not believe that the evidence supports the 3 per cent figure and it is causing huge difficulty to local authorities and our constituents.’

Mr Lewis said in response that he wants ‘fair play in the planning system.’

‘I am keen to hear views on how planning policy for Travellers could be further refined to ensure that the green belt and other areas that we value are given proper protection, said Mr Lewis.

‘This debate has provided a welcome opportunity to pursue that discussion, but I hope that it will develop in due course’.

He concluded his speech by summarising three things the government’s planning reforms seek to achieve: ‘an adequate supply of authorised sites to meet Traveller needs; a level playing field for all; and the protection of our natural heritage and open spaces.’

In the same debate, Philip Hollobone, Conservative Party MP for Kettering, spoke about a private member’s bill that he wanted to name ‘Gypsies and Travellers (the Same Planning Rules as Everyone Else) Bill’, which he said he was told by ‘parliamentary authorities that that was not allowed’.

He said the bill would ‘do what we have all been asking for, which is to remove all special provisions for Gypsies and Travellers in the planning system so that everyone is on exactly the same level playing field when they make a planning application.

‘Why should there be any special provisions for those calling themselves Gypsies and Travellers, especially when we have learned today that three quarters of those people live in houses like everyone else? I am not convinced that there are as many Gypsies and Travellers as everyone says there are.’