Calls for new laws on illegal travellers' sites

There are growing calls from MPs for new laws to deal with unauthorised travellers' sites.

High-profile incidents took place on two sites in Hertfordshire earlier this year, where groups of travellers started laying hardcore and building fences with no planning permission.

MPs are calling for the police to be given immediate powers of arrest and asset seizure, as well as restrictions on getting retrospective planning permission.

But travellers say getting consent before they start work is virtually impossible.

When travellers started building on a field just outside the village of Flamstead in April, the council got an injunction to stop them three days later.

But it took until August to get them to leave the site.

Billy Pither, who chairs Flamstead Parish Council, has no doubt that they intended to establish themselves on the site and then apply for retrospective planning permission.

He said: "Once the caravans are on site, they can start to claim 'oh, we're living here, we need our human rights, can we have planning permission?'

"They need to amend it so that becomes illegal."

Josh Dean, the Labour MP for Hertford and Stortford, believes a blanket ban on getting retrospective planning permission would not work because "we don't want to penalise people who might make simple mistakes, but where people wilfully choose to ignore the law, that's a very different matter".

But travellers say they have to start work without consent because the planning system does not give them a fair chance of getting the go-ahead for a site.

Sherrie Smith, from Gypsies and Travellers Essex, said: "If you're a traveller or a gypsy and you're planning before, your percentage of your planning application going through is virtually zero.

"Whereas if you apply retrospectively, planning officials will look at it on its merits."

The site at Sawbridgeworth was dealt with much more quickly, with an interim injunction being granted the day after travellers moved onto the site and a power of arrest added two days later.

The travellers moved off as soon as the new injunction was served.

Dean said the three-day turnaround in Sawbridgeworth was "the exception not the rule so I think we do need to make sure the police have the power to seize assets or even to make arrests at that earlier stage to stop this kind of thing in its tracks".

But Smith argued that homeowners would not see their properties or assets being seized, so such a policy would discriminate against travellers.

The government is also understood to be looking at the idea of prosecuting or seizing the assets of companies which provide equipment for unauthorised building work.

One of the companies whose names were visible on equipment seen in Sawbridgeworth told the BBC that they did not know who the end user would be as they had been contracted by a builders' merchant.

In that situation, it is unclear who would be prosecuted if an offence of supplying equipment were created.

The government is understood to be exploring further workable solutions to tackle intentional unauthorised development, and is looking for ideas from MPs, local authorities and communities.

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