Examination of Witnesses (Questions 176
- 179)
TUESDAY 29 JUNE 2004
MR RICK
BRISTOW
Q176 Chairman: Can I welcome you
to the Committee and ask you to introduce yourself for the record
and also ask do you want to make an opening statement or are you
happy for us to go straight into questions?
Mr Bristow: My name is Rick Bristow,
Cottenham Residents' Association. My only opening statement would
be to say that having attended an ODPM seminar and having read
much of the evidence that is in the green book you will not find
me or residents of Cottenham, or I think general residents across
the country, who are not sensitive to the fact that there is a
genuine Gypsy-cum-Traveller need. What we are asking for, and
we hope you would acknowledge this, is some form of proportionality
insofar as it is quite clear through the evidence booklet that
the size of site is key. We have certainly found that in Cottenham
and also talking to certain other communities around the country
that seems to be their view as well.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Clive
Betts?
Q177 Mr Betts: You are saying the
PPGs are beginning to cause chaos because they are being used
to override local authority powers in these matters. Can you just
explain that statement?
Mr Bristow: I think I may have
done so in the evidence itself insofar as—and I am talking
private sites here—what is tending to happen is that Travellers
with money are identifying sites which they feel would be suitable
for their own occupation, so they are buying the land quite lawfully,
they may be paying slightly over the odds for it, but having taken
the land they simply move on, bring in the hard core and provide
services—water, electricity, et cetera—and then at
about that stage they will run into trouble with the local authorities.
Those authorities then, as I have explained in my note, tend to
issue enforcement and stop notices et cetera, but they are breached.
At that point civil law says it is wait and see until such time
as the appeals process is followed through. During that time there
is a PPG 1/94 that is, broadly speaking, ignored by the local
authorities—there is no argument about that—and as
a consequence we find that the local communities are simply staring
in on something which is broadly unlawful and stays unlawful until
such time as an appeals process says otherwise.
Q178 Mr Betts: I do not see how that
is a problem with the planning guidance. It is a matter of process
that if someone makes an application and it is turned down, probably
quite appropriately turned down, they still have the right to
appeal that.
Mr Bristow: There is no argument
over the right to appeal retrospectively. Not to be funny about
this, gentlemen, but the reason I wrote a note was not so much
the planning process and the justice of the civil process per
se it was what tends to accompany this, if you like, unlawful
occupation of land, ie the sort of thing that I have described
in the evidence that I submitted.
Q179 Mr Betts: I am not seeing how
you are suggesting it should change. If someone moves on to the
site then planning permission could almost be retrospective. There
is no difference between this planning permission and any other
planning permission and until the process is completed and an
appeal held then a decision cannot be enforced as such. How would
you want to see that changed to remove the sorts of problems that
you in your community believe you are experiencing?
Mr Bristow: The first thing that
we would want to see is if we take the planning process as it
is, which allows retrospective planning and then subsequent appeals,
et cetera, that is fine, but all the while that planning process
is taking place may we please have proper behaviour? May we have
our rights as normal citizens respected by those persons going
on to those sites and in effect misbehaving?
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