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2.4 pm
Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) on introducing the Bill. I am delighted to support it, not least because our constituencies share a boundary. Although Havering is a London borough, it is 50 per cent. green belt and therefore especially vulnerable to the sort of Traveller incursions that my hon. Friend described. I am regularly contacted by constituents who have indeed lost confidence in the planning system.
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister last week issued a very helpful piece of guidance on managing unauthorised encampments, but it has several fatal flaws when it comes to dealing with the sort of case that my hon. Friend has described. It provides advice to local authorities on managing unauthorised encampments where people have camped on land without the landowner or occupier's permission. However, most sites in my constituency where problems occur are owned by Travellers who have bought greenfield sites with the intention of using them for permanent occupation.
Another difficulty with the ODPM guidance is that the powers depend on a local authority's having an authorised site available for Travellers. The London borough of Havering had just such a site, but unfortunately, over a short period, two rival Traveller families laid waste to everything on the site. It had had hard standings, laundry, plumbing, water, lighting and fencing, but by the time the Travellers had finished, there was nothing. Even the fences had been ripped up and burned, and all the facilities had been destroyed. Local authorities in that position are left with a dilemma: either they invest more of their local taxpayers' money in re-providing the facilities that they have already provided, or they leave themselves vulnerable to illegal Traveller encroachment because they do not have an official site to which they can direct Travellers.
Last week, I went to view one site, Hogbar farm in Harold Hill, at the invitation of some of my constituents. The council has been trying to clear that site for the past two years, but one of the greatest impediments to its efforts is its lack of an official site.
The new guidance says that councils will have the
- "power to remove any vehicles and other property that is on the land",
The whole system is fraught with difficulties, and I am delighted that we are debating this Bill today, because it would offer local councils additional powers to deal with these very difficult problems. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar said, we are dealing with people who have a great deal of cash available to them. They can employ highly competent barristers to take their appeals through the courts—probably barristers of a higher quality than local authorities can afford, which gives the Travellers a distinct advantage. They know the planning system inside out, they know the appeals system and they are winning, hands down. That is certainly the case on sites all over my constituency, and I know that the constituencies of many of my colleagues also suffer.
There are problems with the planning, enforcement and appeals processes, and having worked in local government, I know the practical difficulties of issuing an enforcement notice in such circumstances. It is now habitual for sites to be subdivided, and an enforcement notice has to be accompanied by an accurate plan, designating the subdivisions in the site, giving accurate details of the owners of those subdivided plots and having the exact spot where a caravan is placed demarcated on each subdivided area. The occupants of the land know that system only too well, and all too often, when a case comes to court, the subdivisions and the ownership of the subdivided plots are found to have changed, and the caravans are found to have been moved within the subdivided areas. So the occupants play the planning system along, and consequently remain on the site for ever-longer periods. During those periods, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, all sorts of commercial activities take place, involving commercial vehicles, hardcore, tiling and slabs for people's front gardens. Those people carry on commercial activities and become more and more established.
The view from the windows of my constituents whose houses back on to what was a greenfield site when they bought their properties is now one of densely parked caravans and mobile homes that have been bricked up round the bottom. The council is now faced with trying to identify somewhere else in the constituency where it can set up an official site before it has any power to get rid of the unofficial site. Finding such a site is not an easy matter. It might be able to find a site that would be large enough and have road access, but the process then has to go to consultation, and the local residents will
undoubtedly object because they do not want a Travellers' site near their homes. Alternatively, the council will have to designate another piece of green belt, which flies in the face of its trying to clear a green belt site that has already been encroached on illegally. That is quite apart from the practical difficulties involved in dismantling what is on the site. We are not talking about a couple of touring caravans that have appeared overnight and can be towed off by the police.I welcome the steps that my hon. Friend is taking. Any powers that can be given to local councils to enable them to set the processes involving Traveller camps on a legal footing, and to deal with illegal camps, are very welcome, as are any measures that will give stop notices some power so that they can be acted on. At the moment, enforcement notices and stop notices are barely worth the paper that they are printed on. I hope that the Minister will take these comments into consideration and do what he can to help local authorities to deal with this problem. They receive complaints about it on a daily basis, as do I.
2.12 pm
Mrs. Jacqui Lait (Beckenham) (Con): I have no intention of detaining the House for long, but I would like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) on introducing the Bill. I know that he and his constituents have suffered grievously from difficulties involving Travellers. He was telling me about the Meadowlands operation while it was going on; it was an appalling situation. I commend him for introducing the Bill, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) for supporting him. She and her constituents obviously suffer in the same way. Most of us can tell similar tales. It is a hopeful sign that the Government have tabled some amendments. I do not intend to detain the House for long because I want to hear what the Minister has to say about ensuring that this issue is addressed. I congratulate my hon. Friend once again on introducing such a timely and effective Bill.
2.13 pm
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Keith Hill): I congratulate the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) on securing the opportunity to introduce this Bill, in which he seeks amendments to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 in respect of enforcement notices and stop notices. He made a typically moderate and balanced speech, in which he dealt with genuine issues of concern in his constituency and gave some vivid illustrations of some highly regrettable incidents. I entirely agree with him that the law needs to be understood and to be enforced in a civilised fashion.
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman welcomes the amendment we have tabled in the other place on temporary stop notices. I suspect that we have, in fact, anticipated most of his wishes. I agreed with his comments on the community and confidence in the planning system; indeed, they were my own comments. I entirely understand the discontent that is felt, often under intense pressure, over the slowness of the planning system to respond to challenges. It is one of the issues addressed in our planning reform agenda, as set out in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill. Our aim is to create a new planning framework that is fair and flexible, while also speeding up the system.
The temporary stop notice amendments are specifically designed to allow the rapid intervention in potentially inadmissible developments to which the hon. Gentleman referred. They are a response to the strength of feeling demonstrated by him and by the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) during the Committee and Report stages of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill. I know the hon. Gentleman agrees—for he said as much—that the amendments must be not just effective, but used objectively and in a non-discriminatory fashion.
The hon. Member for Upminster brought a wealth of experience in local government to her speech, and gave vivid examples of unacceptable practices and inappropriate use of sites. We are greatly concerned about gypsies' carrying out developments without planning permission, whether or not on green belt. We do not want to discourage Gypsies and Travellers from making provision for themselves, but we want them to work with planning authorities to identify land that is suitable for development. As part of our review of policy on Gypsies and Travellers—a report is due in the summer—we have announced that we shall be reviewing circular 1/94 on Gypsy sites and planning.
The hon. Gentleman made a number of kind observations about me, and it is therefore with a tinge of guilt—but nevertheless with utter determination—that I tell him that I am unable to support any aspect of his Bill. It may be helpful, however, if I explain the operation of this element of the current enforcement system. The hon. Gentleman referred to section 178 of the 1990 Act, under which a local planning authority may itself secure compliance with an enforcement notice once the period for compliance has expired. The power is exercisable in respect of steps required by the notice. Local planning authorities may enter land and carry out remedial action specified in such notices. They can also recover the reasonable costs of that action from the current owner of the land. Regulations may allow unrecovered local planning authority expenses that arise from having entered the land to be charged on the land. Section 178 also provides that it is a criminal offence to obstruct a person exercising the powers of entry or taking the steps necessary under the notice.
Let me explain why the measures in the Bill would not be appropriate. It would extend the provisions of section 178(1) on non-compliance with an enforcement notice by referring to activities required by a notice to cease and the removal of moveable objects. The subsection already allows local planning authorities to
- "enter the land and take those steps"
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