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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 633-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee
Tuesday 13 July 2004 CHIEF CONSTABLE ALISTAIR McWHIRTER QPM MA RT HON KEITH HILL, MP, MS DAWN EASTMEAN and MR JOHN STAMBOLLOUIAN Evidence heard in Public Questions 259 - 384
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee on Tuesday 13 July 2004 Members present Andrew Bennett, in the Chair Mr Clive Betts Mr John Cummings Chris Mole Christine Russell ________________ Memorandum submitted by the Association of Chief Police Officers
Examination of Witnesses
Witness: Chief Constable Alastair McWhirter, QPM MA, Association of Chief Police Officers, examined. Q259 Chairman: Good morning Mr McWhirter and welcome to the Committee. Could I ask you first of all to identify yourself for the record, please? Mr McWhirter: I am Alistair McWhirter, Chief Constable of Suffolk and representative of ACPO. Q260 Chairman: Do you want to say anything by way of introduction or are you happy for us to go straight to questions? Mr McWhirter: I would like to say that I represent ACPO on its Public Order Sub-Committee and speak also on behalf of rural policing issues on behalf of ACPO. Q261 Chris Mole: Good morning Chief Constable. In your submission you have said that "the police experience is that there are insufficient sites to meet demand". Do you believe that the Government should reintroduce a statutory duty on local authorities to provide sites for Gypsies and Travellers? Mr McWhirter: I am not sure that it is a matter for the police to comment on, to be quite honest. What I can tell you is that it would make a great difference to us to have more sites because we feel that the number of sites does not meet the demand for them and therefore the police, along with local authorities, are constantly put in a situation where they have to deal with people who have nowhere to stay. Essentially what we are doing is moving on homeless people from one place to another, very often not knowing where those people are going to or alternatively knowing that they will merely move half a mile down the road to another site which may be worse than the site they are on. Q262 Chris Mole: In your submission you have been critical of agencies working in separate silos. Do you think there is a need for greater inter-agency cooperation? Mr McWhirter: I think there is a significant need for greater inter-agency cooperation. If I can I would like to commend the ODPM and the Home Office on the latest guidance because I think the guidance goes a long way to helping us to develop that sort of partnership working at a local level and for me the great strength of the document is that for the first time it identifies a clear lead and it gives that clear lead to local authorities which was not there before. With Section 61 and Section 77 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act the police and local authorities were often squabbling between themselves as to who had responsibility; we now have a clear lead. That said, silos are still there because what happens in local communities is that a group of Travellers moves in and takes over a piece of land and then very often the police, the local authority and the land owner will work together and will eventually move the people off either by using the criminal law or civil law; they will be moved off, they will leave the district council area and everyone will breathe a great sigh of relief because they have gone. Somebody will pay for the clearing up and so on but nobody ever takes the responsibility for passing on the information about who are the people who are actually causing damage, who are the people who are ripping off members of the public by offering to do work and then doing slip-shod work and not sharing that information with other agencies. What happens is that no intelligence follows on from group to group and I believe very strongly - and ACPO believes very strongly - that we should now overcome that barrier and for the first time try to share information across the country, but we feel that it needs government will for that to happen because it will need to bring together more agencies to work together in law enforcement for a very long time. Q263 Chris Mole: You have touched on the national need and the information system which I think we are going to return to in a moment, but we have also been told that there is a need for a regional dimension in terms of over-viewing the appropriate location for sites. Is that something you would agree with? Mr McWhirter: I would agree that that would be very helpful. Again I do not think it is a matter for the police to comment specifically on sites but it would help us to do our work to have somebody who had a clear picture of what the need and the demand was. I find myself in the situation in Suffolk where we are in an oasis, surrounded by counties which have large influxes of Gypsies and Travellers and Suffolk has very few by comparison. There are routes and areas that constantly have Gypsies and Travellers moving across those areas; there are traditional areas and there are new routes because people tend to go where work is and we see Travellers diversifying into all sorts of new occupations. One of the things that has made a huge difference is the introduction of the mobile telephone which has resulted in many travellers advertising businesses through Yellow Pages and running what appear to be legitimate businesses in the sense of having premises and so on, and Travellers then come and do the work and they have none of the overheads that regular businesses have including tax or national insurance or any of the safety issues that other businesses have to pay. Q264 Chairman: You were a bit reluctant to comment about a statutory duty. Can I just press you a little bit more about this question of a statutory duty? Mr McWhirter: What I can say is that when there was a statutory duty the problem was still there but it was less of a problem than perhaps we have now. Q265 Chairman: So far as the police are concerned, if there was a statutory duty on local authorities it might help. Mr McWhirter: It might help, yes. Q266 Christine Russell: Can I go on to the issue of managing anti-social behaviour now? Would you like to give us your comments on whether or not you feel the police have sufficient powers to tackle anti-social behaviour that sometimes sadly does occur between Travellers and local communities, rather than within the travelling communities? Mr McWhirter: Yes, we have sufficient powers to deal with anti-social behaviour; we are not seeking any additional powers. We were part of the discussion on the powers that we have in the latest Act. I think it would help if there were sites to move people on to. Going back to the anti-social behaviour part of your question, the Government has given us perfectly sufficient powers to deal with it. That does not mean that there are not huge difficulties in dealing with it because I can honestly say that I have never seen such racism in communities other than when Travellers move into an area; there is a naked racism which is not there with other minority ethnic groups who are even more visible in many ways. The public reaction to Travellers can be very much equated to the nineteenth century Punch cartoon where a man is standing on the edge of a village with another man and a villager from the next village is walking towards them and in the caption underneath one man says to another: "Who's him, Jim?" The other one says, "'E be a foreigner" and the first one says, "We'll heave half a brick at him then". That is still the attitude that communities have to strangers moving in generally, we do not see it only with Gypsies and Travellers. In my own county at the moment we have problems with Portuguese families moving into rural communities and so on. We know from the reaction we get when Travellers move into an area when we will constantly get telephone calls saying that crime has gone up and so on and very often the figures do not match that. Travellers arriving in an area does not mean that there is going to be an increase in crime; what it often means is a feeling of unease in the local community and as a result tensions are raised particularly if Travellers then go into a pub and take that pub over very often in large numbers and you end up with conflict in the community. Sometimes that is very difficult to deal with. One of your earlier people giving evidence - the gentleman from Cottenham Residents Association - said that the police will not go in unless they are sure they are going to win. To a certain extent he is quite right. We are very careful about going in there and sorting out these problems because very often we have few police officers initially to be able to deal with that and we have to build up sufficient resources because there are usually fairly large numbers of people involved. It can prove difficult to deal with and often in mêlées and those kinds of disorders it is hard to identify entirely who is to blame and how you can sort it out other than by stopping the breach of the peace that has taken place. Q267 Christine Russell: So you are really saying that it is an irrational fear of outsiders firstly and then secondly police forces are reluctant to intervene unless they have sufficient officers available. Mr McWhirter: Yes. Q268 Christine Russell: So the criticism that you turn a blind eye is not true, but you do need to make sure that you have sufficient resources on the ground. Mr McWhirter: Yes. For all the things that we deal with in terms of Travellers one has to have sufficient resources. Frequently we are asked why we do not use Section 61 more often. If you serve a notice under Section 61 to require someone to leave a site you actually have to have the resources available once you have given the people a period of notice to take all of the caravans into your possession and keep them safely, you have to find homes for the people you are making homeless and so on. You have to have a huge number of people involved, it is not as easy as saying, "Okay, go off by 12 o'clock tomorrow" and sending a police officer along to make sure that that happens. It is not as simple as people think; it is the logistics of actually making it happen that are very difficult. Q269 Chairman: What you are telling us actually is that if there is a sufficient number of Gypsies on a site they can stop the police actually enforcing law and order unless you have sufficient resources to do it. Mr McWhirter: Yes, we have to have sufficient resources and we will get sufficient resources and we do get sufficient resources to do it. We have had tactics adopted by the travelling community of moving in large numbers and certainly a couple of years ago it was at its height when we were getting groups of 150 caravans going round in large groups descending on, for example, a large shopping centre car park, taking over that car park completely at night and then dominating that area for some days. As the guidance says, there are areas where it will always be unacceptable for people to camp unlawfully and we will take action and do that, but we have to then get the resources together to do that and they are very expensive resources to get together. You also then have to have an idea where those 150 caravans are going to go although it is unlikely that people will actually allow us to seize them. So they will probably pull off which is what happens very often; we get all the resources together, we ready to do it and then they will pull away because they do not want to lose their homes, who would? Then it becomes a game of cat and mouse with people being followed and then they settle on a piece of land. Eventually once they move out of that district council area - and this is coming back to the silo point - or indeed out of that force area it is no longer that area's problem. Q270 Chairman: You put the resources in to move them on when there is a big group of them illegally camped, but what about going into smaller sites for things like failure to display tax discs and other relatively minor criminal activities? Is it a temptation for police officers to think that there are other things of a higher priority and so they get away with a certain level of misdemeanours which would be pursued with other members of the public? Mr McWhirter: I think there is a tactic that is used by some Travellers - and I would say it is a small minority of Travellers - to make many of their sites no-go areas for council officials, for police and for people from any agency. I think there is a reluctance on the part of some agencies to move into areas where there are Travellers' sites. Police officers on the whole have no difficulty moving onto some of the smaller Travellers' sites or indeed, the big ones; we do not have no-go areas, we try not to create those sorts of areas and we will go in and enforce the law. I can give you an example of this from only last week in my own police area where we went onto sites and arrested people early in the morning for offences that had been committed. We do take action and we will not allow no-go areas. Q271 Mr Cummings: Do you believe that the Gypsies and Traveller community could themselves do more to eradicate anti-social and criminal behaviour from the community? Mr McWhirter: I think that all communities could do more to eradicate anti-social behaviour. When I speak to Gypsy groups privately rather than at public meetings, they will often say to me that they wish they could eradicate some of the people who cause the most difficulties. There are difficulties in a number of areas; it is not just anti-social behaviour in its broader sense, sometimes it is family disputes and domestic disputes which spill over into the wider community and those can often cause significant problems where you have a group on perhaps an authorised site and another group on an unauthorised site and there are tensions between the two groups locally. Q272 Mr Cummings: Obviously you believe that something positive can be done by the Gypsy and Traveller community. Can you tell the Committee how you believe this can be achieved and whether any progress has been made in that direction in the past? Do you have any practical examples? Mr McWhirter: I think the only thing that can be done at a local level in terms of reducing anti-social behaviour is to keep dialogue going right from the start. I think the new guidance which has been issued is extremely helpful in relation to giving good examples of how that dialogue can be first of all made and then maintained. I think it comes down to having good Gypsy and Traveller liaison officers; it comes down to having named individuals in police forces. Q273 Chairman: When you talk about liaison officers, is that liaison officers within the police force or within the local authority or both? Mr McWhirter: In the local authority but then having named police officers who are also liaison people so that the local authority and the police are working together as one. That is why I am pleased that the guidance - although it has not get been formally launched in a broader sense - gives clear plans as to how you can set up a local strategy and to work that through. I think that if those areas that are affected by Gypsies and Travellers moving in do have plans in place in relation to that you will at least be able to start the process of being able to create a dialogue with the Gypsy and Traveller community to be able to help them to eradicate that sort of behaviour while people are camping in their particular area. I think that is about setting up agreements at a local level about what you will do about rubbish, about behaviour generally and all those sorts of things which is saying that if there is a period of toleration then they will only be tolerated if they comply with these sets of standards. I think the standards that are applied should be the same standards that apply to the settled community; we are not asking for more of Gypsies and Travellers than we are of the settled community. Q274 Mr Cummings: Gypsy and Traveller groups have indicated to this Committee that all sites should obviously have amenity blocks on each pitch, but your submission indicates to the Committee that amenity blocks on transit sites are frequently subject to extensive and criminal damage. Have you any suggestions how this damage can be avoided? Is it a matter of educating the Travellers themselves, alongside their rights, to take the responsibilities that go with those rights in order to protect what amenities are being provided for them? Mr McWhirter: I believe that in the design of any new site there needs to be consultation, as you would with the settled community about the design of houses. I think the transit sites should be designed in consultation with the Gypsy and Traveller community. I think that is the only way we are going to avoid the damage. I think you are going to see a transit site tomorrow where there has been extensive damage in the past. I used to police that area so I know about that particular site. That is an area where there was a huge amount of money spent on that particular site and then it was very seriously damaged. Q275 Chairman: Was that because it was badly designed? Mr McWhirter: I do not know the reason behind that and I do not think I can answer the question fully. All I am saying is that I think that if you are going to be successful in designing something you want people to use and they feel is effective, then there needs to be consultation in that process. Q276 Chris Mole: You were touching just now on the importance that ACPO see in having a cross-cutting information system to record information about anti-social behaviour or environmental damage. Can you explain how that might work and would it be similar to the New Age Traveller monitoring system of the 1980's and 1990's? Mr McWhirter: Yes, I think it would be similar to the New Age Traveller monitoring system of the 1980's and 1990's because that was really the model that was adopted then for dealing with unauthorised camping by New Age Travellers at a time when they were going round in very large groups and causing major disruption to the life of individual communities. I would see this working in a similar way but slightly differently. First of all I think there needs to be a national database which is maintained and which can share information with local authorities, with the police, with the Environment Agency and with trading standards and, if it were thought appropriate, also with the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise. This has to do with two aspects, one is environmental damage caused by people who camp in an unauthorised way and then move on and leave that damage and cause disruption to the life of the community. The second aspect is to do with issues around the avoidance of duty, the avoidance of VAT and industrial processes which are carried out by some Travellers, particularly in the West Midlands area where there is a lot of wire stripping and burning going on on these individual sites. There is a huge amount of turnover in terms of money, little of which seems to attract any form of tax or information and I do think there is a taxation opportunity which has been missed here and I feel - although I have no evidence to support this - that both Customs and Excise and Trading Standards are not as involved as they should be with Gypsies and Travellers. Q277 Chris Mole: Whilst I am sure the Chancellor would welcome the additional VAT income, is there not a serious worry that people on this list are never going to get on a proper site and are going to be permanently camped illegally as a result? Mr McWhirter: I think that what we are talking about is people who are camping in an unauthorised way rather than people coming onto an authorised site, although I can see the point you are making. We still have significant numbers every night camping in an unauthorised way and it is about somebody arriving in an area and it being found that when they were on their last site or last site but one, they caused £10,000 worth of damage. I think that as a local authority and as a police force you have a right then to say, "If you come and camp in this area then these are the strict rules that we are going to apply to you or you are not going to be allowed to stop in this area or on this particular site". I know that has the potential for difficulties; I know that it has also the potential for breaching people's human rights and that one would have to manage this in a very effective way which complied with both the Data Protection Act and also allow Travellers to access the data that was being held on them because they are the data subjects after all. This is not criminal intelligence in its broadest way but I feel it would encourage people who are abusing the system and living above the law at the present time to actually take their responsibilities and comply with the law. Q278 Chris Mole: So ACPO have acknowledged those civil liberties questions. Mr McWhirter: Yes. Q279 Chris Mole: What could you then do to reassure people that it would be used to trace offenders and not - as some Gypsies and Travellers might be concerned - an index of all of them? Mr McWhirter: The last thing I would want would be for it to be an index of Gypsies and Travellers. That would be wholly wrong and I do not think it should even be an index of those who camp in an unauthorised way - although that is unlawful - because I think that in itself would be one step too far in terms of a draconian approach. What I think it should do is to identify and deal quite properly with the minority of people who give Gypsies and Travellers a bad name and who do use their ability to move round the country to avoid their responsibilities to the local communities. Q280 Chairman: It has been said to us that in Southern Ireland the police, Customs and Excise, the Revenue have all been getting tougher with some of the travelling communities and that has produced quite a few moving to this country. I do not know whether that is true or not, but what would be the impact if you actually got tougher with these groups? Would they simply move to places where life was a little bit less law enforcing? Mr McWhirter: I cannot answer that question; I do not know the numbers coming from Southern Ireland. I have heard anecdotally the same thing as you have in relation to that particular point. However, I think that the ability to identify individuals who are causing problems, the ability to follow them and serve them with notices or serve them with bills in relation to it and/or indeed to take civil action against them in order to recover debt, would discourage people. What I want to do is to modify their behaviour, not to stop them carrying out their way of life. Q281 Mr Betts: In your submission you expressed some dissatisfaction with ODPM in the length of time it has taken to publicise and disseminate the new "Guidance on Managing Unauthorised Camping" that the Department has produced. If I can paraphrase what you said, rather than a formal launch it sort of fell in the water. Is this a criticism you still hold? Mr McWhirter: It was not meant to be a criticism. The point I was making was that it has not been formally launched and I think it deserves a formal launch. The point I was making is that it is still under consultation because they are looking at points in Sections 62 (a) to (e) and there is further consultation taking place. My understanding is, since I wrote the submission, that it is going to be more formally launched so I am encouraged by that. If I had a criticism I think it would be over the long gestation period of the document in the first place. We started work on it in 2001 and finally in 2004 it saw the light of day, so it has taken a long time. I think it is a good document despite that and far, far better than the 1998 document. Q282 Mr Betts: What difference will people see when it is formally launched? Mr McWhirter: I genuinely think that at a local level it will make a difference. I think it has a clarity and practical use that the previous documents did not have. I think it is genuinely a good guide for police and local authorities to work to and I think if people follow its contents effectively and well then they will be prepared to deal with issues when people move into an area and be able to deal with those much more effectively. The difficulty is that all the responsibility for this in the past has fallen between different departments in local authorities - very often the legal department or the environmental health department - but nobody had it written into their job description. Very often if there were Gypsy and Traveller liaison officers appointed by the local authority they did not have a clear line of command back to people in the centre or access to funds to be able to deal with things. Gypsies and Travellers are one of those things which nobody wants to talk about or deal with until there is suddenly a large group of them moving into the area. Suddenly it moves to the top of the list and as soon as they move off it moves back to the bottom of the list again. People need to have plans in place to be able to deal with that. This new guidance is helpful in encouraging that to happen. Its difficulty will be that there will still be places in the country who rarely have Travellers moving in who will not make plans and who will suddenly be faced with a situation where a large group move in, set up camp and they do not have the plans nor the liaisons that need to be in place with the local authority, the police and other agencies in order to make a smooth response to a large group moving onto a common or moving onto a playing field. Q283 Mr Betts: You appear to have some concerns about the additional powers granted to the police under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, that they really are not very much use to you. Can you elaborate on that? Mr McWhirter: Yes. I think the powers themselves are useful powers if there were transit sites to move people onto. There are difficulties associated with the powers. The powers have difficulty in the sense that one can imagine going on to an unauthorised site - and this is what the consultation that is going on has been about - and saying to people, "We would like you to move off now, please, out of the district council area because there is a transit site available that you can move to" and them saying, "Yes, well there are only 12 pitches on there and there are 15 of us here, which are the ones you are not going to move on? We travel as a family group." Those are practical things that we can overcome. We think it is a useful power; we were consulted in the process. However, it needs local authorities to take up the option of having transit sites and we all know that is proving more difficult even though there is money available. Q284 Mr Betts: Trying to recap what you are saying to us this morning, is it: provide more sites and then we can take a more effective action towards the unauthorised camping? Mr McWhirter: I think that is part of the process; I do not think it is all of the process. I do think the silo issue about treating it as a very local problem when in fact we have a regional and national problem is one that needs to be addressed and that can only be addressed by sharing information in an effective and proper way. Q285 Mr Cummings: Drawing from your considerable experience, what sort of site management works best? Mr McWhirter: I think that the site management that seems to work best is where you have a dedicated site manager who is on that site and who can work with the people rather than somebody who has it as an additional responsibility and who is transient and who may not have the knowledge to be able to build up relationships. The people who are particularly good - some of whom have given evidence to you as part of the group who came to speak to you - are the people who I have had admiration for over the years, who build relationships with the Travellers, they often know the people who regularly come every year and that relationship pays off because as a result people behave well because they are dealing with people whom they know and trust. Q286 Mr Cummings: How do the police and other authorities tackle issues of conflict such as those that arise between families fighting in power struggles? How can these be resolved? Mr McWhirter: In the same way as we deal with them in the settled community which is often not very well, I am afraid, because dealing with internal family matters is a difficult thing for the police and very often we only deal with the outward manifestation when people commit criminal offences - ie when there is violence or threats that are made - and then we have to deal with it. What we often have then is conflicting views about what happened, who said what and to whom and what threats were made. With the Gypsy and Traveller community that is made even more difficult because very often they will not speak to us, they will not tell us what is going on and we will get reports, for example, of someone with a shotgun in the street and we will go and deal with what is essentially a firearms incident and find that we are dealing with a domestic dispute. Q287 Mr Cummings: You also say in your evidence that Travellers privately complain about being intimidated but very rarely make an official complaint to the police. So there is evidence of intimidation. Mr McWhirter: Anecdotal evidence often through third parties but in terms of actual reports to the police it becomes very difficult. The suggestion is that what often happens is that somebody will think that they would like to take over a site which other people are on and we will get power struggles over that particular site. Chairman: I think we will have to close this part of the session at that point. Thank you very much for your evidence, Chief Constable. Can we have the next set of witnesses, please? Memoranda submitted by the Local Government Association and the National Association of Local Councils Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Councillor Susie Kemp, Chairman of the LGA Planning Executive, Councillor Chloe Lambert, Mr Lee Searles, Programme Manager for Planning and Transport, Local Government Association, Mr Michael Green, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Manager and Mr John Treble CBE, Vice-Chair, Somerset Association of Local Councils, National Association of Local Councils, examined. Q288 Chairman: Good morning and welcome to the Committee. Could you please identify yourselves for the record? Mr Treble: My name is John Treble. I am a resident of a small rural parish in Somerset. I am vice president and vice chairman of the Somerset Association of Local Councils and former chairman of our Parish Council which, relatively speaking, houses a large number of Gypsies. We have long experience at the grass roots level. Mr Green: Michael Green, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Manager for the National Association of Local Councils. Councillor Kemp: I am Councillor Susie Kemp. My home council is West Berkshire Council and I am chairman of the Local Government Association Planning Executive. Councillor Lambert: I am Councillor Mrs Chloe Lambert. I am a member Aylesbury Vale District Council and I am also one of the two deputy chairman of the LGA Planning Executive. Mr Searles: I am Lee Searles. I am Programme Manager for Planning and Transport at the LGA. Q289 Chairman: Do any of you wish to say anything by way of introduction or are you happy for us to go straight to questions? Mr Green: I would like to make a quick introduction. In light of the evidence we have submitted, one of the general principles by which the National Association decides it policy - particularly around this issue - is to try to bring consensus and agreement in areas where others might try to bring heat. We are very pleased that today it has come into the public domain that the Travellers Reform Group and Cottenham have come to a joint agreement based on the communication they have been having recently - I believe they have both given evidence to you - and I can hopefully commend this agreement which the National Association does not sign up to every dot and comma of, but anything which takes out any unnecessary heat from any issue in discussions is something which the National Association would wish to promote. Q290 Chris Mole: Evidence from the Local Government Association talks about site provision numbers only being improved by reinstatement of the statutory duty supported by adequate funding. Can you explain why you think reinstatement of the statutory duty is so important? Councillor Kemp: Really to ensure that sites are provided. We think that the new Planning Act provides an opportunity with the regional spatial strategies. I think we make very clear in our evidence that it is not every council that will need to provide sites because clearly Travellers do not want to be in every part of our country. I think what we are saying is that collectively councils should now have a duty to provide Traveller sites and clearly we need to do that within a plan. One of the things we want to make sure is that we are working with Traveller groups to ensure that these sites are going to be used and we feel there is no point in providing sites if Gypsies and Travellers are not going to use them. I think that is why we feel it is quite important to have a plan, to have it done on a regional or national basis and to have councillors doing it collectively, but clearly the end game must be that these sites are used properly and legitimately as your previous speaker indicated. Q291 Chris Mole: So if it were to be re-introduced can you explain why you are pointing toward it not being for all authorities? Councillor Kemp: Very simply because Gypsies and Travellers do not want to be in every part of the country and there will be some councils that will provide sites and nobody will ever come. I think we are trying to be sensible about it and say that clearly there are areas in our country where Gypsies and Travellers want to be. Q292 Chairman: That is a cop out; every local authority is going to say the Gypsies and Travellers do not want to come here. Councillor Kemp: I speak from experience. I have Travellers in my own ward and I know at first hand the grief it causes law abiding residents and the settled community (as it has been referred to earlier today). However, the fact of the matter is that there are some parts of this country where Travellers do not want to be and therefore I think we have to be sensible about providing sites and where they are provided because they must be used. Mr Searles: Local authorities themselves brought this issue to the LGA and said that since the statutory duty was deleted they have found that it has not worked because many local authorities make the effort to plan and provide sites but unfortunately many do not. This has led to some authorities feeling that they have become a honey pot for Travellers whilst their neighbours have not made any provision at all. In debating this issue within the LGA and running a few round tables with stakeholder groups, it was felt that a statutory duty needs to be reinstated but clearly - going back to the debate that led to the statutory duty being deleted in the first place - the requirement to provide a site in every single authority does not seem to make sense because what is needed is a more intelligent approach, one which actually knows what the flows of Gypsies and Travellers are through regions and through localities; ones which actually identify the overall aggregate need in terms of numbers. With the advent of the new Planning Act and regional spatial strategies we felt that there should be a statutory duty on every local authority but whether each local authority would need to provide it or not would be dependent on some kind of regional framework which set out the need and would then lead to a requirement for provision in identified locations. All that would be based on flows and on numbers. Q293 Chris Mole: You have referred on a number of occasions to doing these assessments at a regional level and a number of our witnesses have made similar points. How do you think national policy should make that happen? Mr Searles: We think that if the Government made that an element of regional spatial strategies and regional spatial strategies therefore then included some kind of strategy which would set out the need for some kind of assessment of need based on known and anticipated flows and tradition, through a brokering process with sub-regional planning, through councils working together - which we have identified a strong desire for - then you can arrive at a sensible provision which would be supported both by councils and by Travellers because it would meet their needs. Mrs Lambert: Also I think it needs to be provided at a sub-regional level and not just a regional one. I think that is very important because as previous speakers have referred to there are local differences between the need for Traveller sites. Could I just come back to the possible reinstatement - hopeful reinstatement - of the statutory duty on local authorities? I think every local councillor who has had to deal with a Travellers' unauthorised encampment will encounter extreme difficulties. If there were more sites and if local authorities had a duty to provide, I think it would make the local member's job easier in dealing with adverse reaction from the settled community. If it were recognised among the wider public that this is a duty on local authorities then I think the resistance would be less. Q294 Chris Mole: So what you are talking about is something like the housing planning numbers process. Councillor Kemp: Yes. Q295 Christine Russell: What are really saying is that it would get the local councillors off the hook if the local councillor could turn round and say, "It is not my fault, it is central Government saying that there has to be a Gypsy site in this area". Mrs Lambert: Would that it did get us off the hook. I am sure it would not entirely, but at least it would enable local authorities and members, in consultation with the public - and I include the travelling public in that as well as the settled community - to provide sites that are needed in the most appropriate places and not in places where unauthorised encampments take place at present which undoubtedly causes more aggro for people. Councillor Kemp: It is absolutely essential that we get away from Travellers camping illegally. The amount of grief and despair that it causes in a community is untold. Residents cannot understand why this group of people are able to come in - whether they own the land or do not own the land - set up camp and live there when, in my particular part of the world, if they want to put a garden shed up they would have to go through the planning system. I think what we are trying to get across is that we want to be part of this equation as local authorities and work with the travelling community but we want to make sure that it is done within the legal framework and not done illegally as it is at the moment. Q296 Christine Russell: Can I turn to Mr Treble and Mr Green now. In your submission you talked about Travellers having the same access to a range of accommodation as is accepted in settled communities. You are saying that the planning process needs to encourage greater diversity. Is this really realistic knowing how difficult it is to get any local support for a designated site? Mr Green: In the context of GTS36 (which is the National Association's policy) I think it is realistic to say that the Gypsy and Traveller community have legitimate requirements in terms of arrangements of accommodation. Some have the legitimate requirement to privately own permanent sites; some will have a need for transit sites; some may even have the need for mixed. We do not see, as a National Association, the general principle that planning authorities should be dealing with those well-founded expectations any differently than they deal with the well-founded expectations of people who wish to reside in normal accommodation in their areas or the well-founded but perhaps less deliverable expectation that there might be public sector rented accommodation available or private rented sector accommodation of a certain standard available. In that context Gypsies and Travellers are not separate in that context. At this point I do need to make the point that Mr Treble's county - Somerset - have a slightly different policy position and Mr Treble has put his own memorandum into this discussion, but in the context of what is written in GTS36 I believe it is a legitimate statement which, in the end, it is for planning authorities, perhaps under influence and guidance from government. Q297 Christine Russell: You mentioned the Circular 1/94. Do you think that actually needs revising and, if it does, how would you revise it? It is the evidence that gives the planning guidelines. Mr Green: NALC and I look at 1/94 as part of the context of a whole. I think it is legitimate to say that 1/94 has been interpreted so broadly across the board that it provides problems in itself that in the end something like a return to statutory provision would clarify. In that context as well it would also help if there was a clear statement - particularly when looking at planning issues and what land can be used for and whether or not it is legitimate for there to be encampments on the land - that the planning process is neutral with regards to the ethnic or lifestyle background of those making the application. Q298 Christine Russell: As it is being interpreted at the moment do you feel it is being interpreted perhaps too negatively as giving authorities the opportunity to say no? Mr Green: When that case has been put by others representing other sections other than first tier councils, it does seem to be genuine. Whether it is real or whether it is perceptive, there is a real concern that sometimes the planning process is not neutral in that regard. Q299 Mr Betts: If a statutory duty was reintroduced, presumably you would be expecting grants to with that. What sort of grants would you be looking for and - I suppose the age-old question - how do you deal with those authorities that have already got on with the job and provided sites? Do you not think they will feel a little aggrieved that they have done it from their own expense but the ones who have not bothered in the past now get the grants to help? Councillor Kemp: We will hope and expect some grants, both capital grants and revenue grants to help fund. I must just come back and put the point of view that I experience at first hand from residents who pay their taxes - the gentleman speaking before was talking about Inland Revenue taxes and what have you - and we would also hope that there would be some revenue coming from the travelling community themselves through housing rents or however it is done. I think local authorities would find it very difficult to provide sites and a dedicated Travellers' Liaison Officer - which again we support - without some funding coming from somewhere. Q300 Mr Betts: You would expect revenue funding at least for the existing sites as well as new sites. Councillor Kemp: Absolutely. Q301 Mr Betts: We have had evidence of the problems with county council sites and the particular restrictions on getting appropriate rent for those, are you now looking for a rent regime to cover all public sites? Councillor Kemp: I think we need to make sure there are sufficient revenue flows flowing into both levels of councils where we have two-tier councils. I am not an expert on how that is done, but it is clear that councillors will be more motivated to do the job properly if they are fully funded for it. Mrs Lambert: There needs to be parity really. Q302 Mr Betts: Between the different public sites? Mrs Lambert: Yes, absolutely. Q303 Christine Russell: I want to move on to what you do about illegal encampments and ask perhaps Mr Treble and Mr Green initially, in your evidence you say that you consider the most effective way to deal with illegal encampments is to impose a duty on each local authority to provided a minimum number of transit pitches. Why do you think that would work and how do you define local authority in a two-tier situation? Mr Green: I think the answer to the last question is a matter for ODPM but it would seem to me that in terms of unitaries it is clear but in terms of where it is counties and districts whichever is the major planning authority with responsibility for good use of land perhaps they should take the responsibility. It probably would be district but in a sense the more the principal local authority sector moves towards unitaries the less the issue is worth debating. Q304 Christine Russell: There is a lot of buck-passing at the moment. Mr Green: In an age where counties and districts and two-tiers are asked to justify themselves, perhaps a bit of cooperation between them on this issue would not go amiss. Councillor Kemp: I think I must come to the defence of counties and districts. There is good cooperation and good liaison. Clearly good guidance would always help but I would not want this Committee to go away with a feeling that counties and districts do not talk and liaise with each other over this issue. Mr Treble: I have been a bit thrown by that last remark. Unfortunately I have lived so long, I have seen all this so many times that I am confused as to whether I am repeating what I heard yesterday or ten years ago, but the notion that there is good liaison automatically between district and county council is not within my experience. The second point I want to make is that I agree with all that has been said that the only way through this - as I said in my paper - is to have a statutory duty but one must not be deceived into thinking that a statutory duty in itself achieves anything. There was a clear statutory duty in the 1968 Act and after 25 years of that Act only 35 per cent of the need had been catered for. The reason was that that statutory duty needed to be reinforced by ministerial direction and intervention, and a number of the ministers of the time - including Mr Ridley who spoke more clearly than many of them on this - were reluctant to intervene and exercise their power and as a result, despite the fact that there was a statutory duty, despite the fact that there was financial support from the Government (Exchequer support as well), most local authorities ignored their duty and - if I may move to another hobby horse - they also have a statutory duty for dealing with these people as homeless under the Housing Regulations. The definition in the Housing Code is that if a person lives in a moveable structure and there is nowhere where he may legally place it and reside in it, he is, ipso facto, homeless. If so, a duty to provide suitable accommodation rests on the housing departments and housing departments are almost invariably - I think invariably - with district councils and not with county councils. Q305 Chairman: So you want a statutory duty and a courageous minister! Mr Treble: It is possible you underestimate the problem for the elected member at the local level and it will help him to discharge his job (a) if he can show there is a statutory duty and (b) that the site will be under some measure of public control because that is what worries people. They get permission to put this on and what happens next? We are all familiar with what developers do by getting in with an inch and then taking a mile. The local population is worried about that. They would be less worried if they knew they were dealing with sites that had been provided publicly - although they would not like the thought they would have to pay for it - and would be supervised. We have sites like that. Our county council has a very big transit site near Bridgewater which it manages very well. You asked about management and I have a couple of points on that. One thing is to recruit a Gypsy who wants to be permanent and let him manage the site. It can work very well. Q306 Christine Russell: What I am trying to tease out is whether there is any agreement amongst you as to whether or not transit sites should be actively supported and recommended as a way of tackling illegal encampments and, if you do agree on that, who should manage them? Mr Treble, you have just suggested the Travellers themselves should have a responsibility. What is the LGA's stance? Mrs Lambert: I would say that officers of the district should manage it in liaison obviously with the county council. Under the previous legislation planning-wise usually you had provision for Gypsy and Traveller sites in the old county structure plans and then it was up to the districts in their local plans to have specific policies relating to Travellers. That sort of thing would continue but obviously under the new development frameworks. Q307 Christine Russell: My final question is on unauthorised camping. There has been a suggestion in a recent circular or guidance note from ODPM that there needs to be far more cooperation and discussion between neighbouring local authorities and neighbouring police forces than goes on at the moment. How realistic is that recommendation from government? Councillor Kemp: I think we support it. It has to be realistic. I think it is something that councils have to start doing. I go back to where I started really because I think the new Planning Act with the regional spatial strategies, the sub-regional strategies and the local development plans actually afford an opportunity for us to do that. I think that is a very positive thing that we have at our disposal. One of the things I wanted to get on the record before we finish is about the illegal encampments. We do welcome the temporary stop notice that we have in the Act and hope that we will have some good guidance to go with that. I think we see that as a tool that local authorities can use to stop illegal encampments. Q308 Mr Cummings: We spoke briefly about site management, but who do you believe to be best placed to manage Gypsy and Traveller sites? Do you believe it is local authority officers, Gypsies themselves or have you have given any thought to or explored other alternatives such as Registered Social Landlords? Mrs Lambert: I have no experience in my own authority of Registered Social Landlords being involved. Q309 Mr Cummings: There is one I understand it is the Novas-Ouvertures group in Kent. They manage eight sites in Kent, Sussex and south-east London. Mr Treble: We have no experience of it but we have examined the possibility and have one housing association that indicated an interest but we just do not have the camps at the moment where they could be deployed. Q310 Mr Cummings: But you have explored other alternatives to local authorities or Gypsies themselves. Mr Treble: Yes. Q311 Mr Cummings: Have you reached any conclusions? Mr Searles: We do not have an established policy on that. I suspect we would think that if there are solutions locally that local authorities want to pursue ... Q312 Mr Cummings: But have you explored any? Mr Searles: No, we have not. Mr Treble: We have but it happens to be a private site, 70 pitches, owned by a Gypsy who resides there permanently. He manages it and may I say that the nature of the Gypsy community is such that a king Gypsy can exercise discipline over a Gypsy community far better than any external agency can. He sometimes does it crudely by simply refusing to admit people but he does it and we have a camp of 70 which is under such good control that it is not causing much of a local problem once it was accepted as a regular item there. Q313 Mr Cummings: That is extremely helpful, thank you. Good management appears to be the key to any successful sites. I think you have all agreed on that. How easy is it to find people within local authorities to take on the job of Gypsy and Traveller Liaison Officer, site managers? As an association are you providing any training courses? Are you moving in that direction to encourage local authorities to provide adequate training? Councillor Kemp: No, we are not. Q314 Mr Cummings: Can I ask why not? The LGA is supposed to be doing these sorts of things. Do you have an ideal design for a site? Councillor Kemp: No, we do not. I think in our defence like every association we have a limited amount of resource and I have to say that our resource within our own executive has been fairly and squarely put at the Planning Act where we have spent a great deal of time and energy making sure that that comes out in the way we hoped it would. I think going forward clearly there is a piece of work to be done and as chairman I undertake to go back to the Association and see that we do look to so something. We have had seminars and conferences over the last 12 months. Down at Bournemouth last week we did have a very good meeting with councillors and officers regarding Travellers. We are in dialogue but clearly we need to do more. Q315 Chairman: If we looked at this issue again, say next Easter, would you be able to tell us exactly what you have done? Councillor Kemp: We will certainly go away and make sure that we look at it carefully and how we can use resources to look at this issue. This is an issue that has given a great deal of difficulty for many councillors and many councils, particularly with illegal encampment and it is something we have to, as an Association, focus more on than I think we have hitherto. I think we need to have guidance not only for councillors on how to deal with it but also indeed residents. Residents cannot understand why a group of Travellers are able to come into a field in the middle of outstanding natural beauty that they own now - they have bought it from a farmer - and concrete it over on Bank Holiday Saturday and there is absolutely nothing we can do because a planning application has been simultaneously submitted to the authority. Q316 Mr Cummings: It appears that the LGA have done absolutely nothing about anything. Perhaps if this Committee has changed anything at all it is to have turned your attention to a problem that has been with us for a very, very long time. Councillor Kemp: I think that is unfair. I think with a Planning Minister sitting behind me I hope he will nod his head and say that we have engaged with him somewhat over the Planning Act. Chairman: On that note, can I thank you all very much for your evidence. Memorandum submitted by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Rt Hon Keith Hill, a Member of the House, Minister of State for Housing and Planning, Ms Dawn Eastmean, Head of Housing Management Division and Mr John Stambollouian, Head of Planning Directorate Division, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, examined. Q317 Chairman: Good morning and can I welcome you to the final session of our inquiry into Gypsy and Traveller sites. Can I ask you to identify your team, please? Keith Hill: I would like to begin by introducing my officials who will be supporting me through the Committee's deliberations this morning. I am joined by Dawn Eastmean, Head of Housing Management and John Stambollouian, Head of Planning Control. Q318 Chairman: Would you like to make a brief statement? Keith Hill: I would like to make a brief statement to update the Committee on the activities of my Department but I will try to make it as brief as possible. As the Committee is aware the Department is currently undertaking a comprehensive review of its Gypsy and Traveller policies which is due to report to ministers in the summer. The review centres around Gypsy and Traveller accommodation issues. This consideration is set within the over-arching policy aims of mainstreaming Gypsy and Traveller issues in the housing and planning systems and improving social inclusion. Gypsies and Travellers are a marginalised group who often fare worse than others in terms of health, education and employment. Stable and appropriate accommodation would go some way towards facilitating improvements in these areas although it is by no means the whole answer. In advance of the review being completed a great deal of activity is already underway in the Department. I am pleased to inform the Committee that new guidance on housing needs assessment is being prepared which will include guidelines on assessing the needs of Gypsies and Travellers. The current Circular 1/94 is being revised to address some of the problems there have been with getting planning permission for sites. In addition, the new planning system will bring a regional dimension to the consideration of Gypsy and Traveller needs and provision. The Gypsy Caravan Count is being revised to improve its accuracy and usefulness and the document Revised Guidance on Unauthorised Encampments was published on the ODPM website in February and will shortly be incorporating new guidance on the Anti-Social Behaviour Act Trespass Powers. I can also tell the Committee that the Gypsy site refurbishment grant continues to improve conditions on sites around the country and to provide new transit sites and stopping places. We are planning to extend the permissible purposes of the Housing Corporation to allow RSLs to provide Gypsy and Traveller sites and through the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act we have introduced temporary stop notices which will help to tackle some of the problems arising from unauthorised development. I hope the Committee will agree that a good deal is already happening. Our aim is to give Gypsies and Travellers the kind of choices that others take for granted; to see Gypsies and Travellers and the settled community living peacefully together in cohesive communities and to reverse years of marginalisation and exclusion. I do not underestimate the challenges but I am confident that a very positive start has been made. Q319 Chairman: Thank you very much for that; it is very helpful. You refer to this report to ministers in the summer. Presumably that is this summer and for ministerial purposes how long does this summer go on for? Keith Hill: It is this summer, I am happy to confirm, and the summer is the summer! Q320 Christine Russell: You have pinched my question, Chairman; that was going to be my question. Let us say summer goes on for another three months maximum. Are you anticipating any slippage after that? Keith Hill: I do not think so, no. Q321 Mr Betts: Every witness we have had so far has said that the key to all this is getting a statutory duty on local authorities to provide sites. Do you accept that? Keith Hill: The Government is, of course, considering all options, including the introduction of the duty. However, I am very clear that a duty would have significant spending implications - that has already been referred to in this morning's exchanges - which central Government would, as you know, have to fund under the new burdens policy. I am also conscious that a duty would put Gypsies and Travellers arguably in an advantageous position by comparison with other local residents with housing needs. On the whole I have to say that I am inclined to think that the introduction of the duty does not really sit comfortably with our policy of expanding areas of choice, discretion and decision making amongst local authorities. We have done some research into barriers to site provision and it appears that rather less than half local authorities see the absence of a duty as a barrier to site provision. Q322 Mr Betts: Given your wide responsibility for the whole nation, how is whatever you are going to develop as a policy going to ensure that we do address this shortfall. We had the evidence of Pat Niner that we would probably require up to 2000 permanent and slightly more transit sites and she said that the might be an underestimate and they would be required by 2007. In every estimate that has been done it is accepted there is currently a shortage. Do you accept that the central remit of the policy you come up with has to be to address that shortage and made sure it is done? Keith Hill: I think we certainly need to take every possible step to deal with what you might describe as the unmet demand. I have to say that in preparation for this Committee I did a bit of a back of the envelope calculation and it seems to me that the maximum of unauthorised pitches is about 4000 and you could describe that as the unmet demand. That does seem to fit in with Pat Niner's more detailed calculation which says that one to two thousand residential places and two to two and a half thousand transit sites or stopping places. So there is an unmet demand which needs to be resolved and I think we can begin to resolve that unmet demand in a number of ways. I do think that one of the ways in which we need to go forward is by the new housing need assessment and the new planning framework particularly at the regional level. I could expand on that if that would be helpful. Let me remind the Committee that we will be introducing in 2005 a new housing needs assessment and we would expect on the basis of that that the local housing strategies developed would feed into regional housing strategies which in their turn will guide regional planning. We would expect the regional spatial strategies to indicate the numbers of accommodations required in each local authority and it would be for the local authorities to identify appropriate sites, presumably which Gypsies and Travellers might purchase and develop. Q323 Mr Betts: I suppose people will say that is a great aspiration and then ask what happens if no more sites are produced as a result. This is people's great concern. Everyone can identify with the problem, everyone recognises something has to be done about it, but in the end things do not get done so, as Minister, what will you actually be looking for in terms of the powers you to make sure that it is actually delivered in terms of the number of sites that are needed? Keith Hill: I do think that the whole issue would benefit from a slightly more systematic approach than we have had heretofore and I think that the new regional spatial strategies do offer the possibility of a more managed approach and an agreed approach between authorities on this issue. It remains the fact that we will have a clearer idea of what the local need is on the basis of the new methods of assessment and we will be arming the local authorities with the methodology to make that assessment more effective and we do have, of course, a continuing programme of site refurbishment and investment in new transit sites. Q324 Mr Betts: No-one is questioning that this might provide a much more accurate assessment perhaps of what the need is and what the numbers are. I think there is a sort of scepticism that unless there is a statutory requirement to actually deliver the sites they will not get delivered. Everyone will accept the need and nothing will get done. Mr Stambollouin: Could I just elaborate on how this will interface with the new planning system. We have asked the University of Cambridge to develop a new housing needs assessment approach and that will specifically include provision for Gypsies and Travellers as part of that needs assessment. What we are doing is mainstreaming housing provision for Gypsies and Travellers alongside our general housing provision. Local authorities will have to produce their housing needs assessment in line with this approach which will then be quality assured by the regional housing boards. It will become part of the regional spatial strategies and the regional spatial strategies will allocate provision - the need to make provision - either on a sub-regional basis or on an individual local authority basis and then the local development documents which are produced locally will have to be in compliance with the regional spatial strategies so they will have to make provision. Q325 Mr Betts: I can see there are one or two funny looks around the room about this. We have the need assessment; we have the strategy; we have the allocation of provision to authorities, but what happens if no more sites are provided? Keith Hill: I think that under the new system - which will offer greater clarity as to the way in which the need for sites will be identified - we will see this greater cooperation at a sub-regional level between authorities. It is perfectly clear that local authorities will have a key role in identifying appropriate locations for sites and working with Gypsies and Travellers to assist them to find land that they can purchase and develop. I do not think we ought to ignore the extent to which the Gypsy and Traveller community is actually interested in the acquisition of land on which to settle. Q326 Chairman: How long is the planning process going to take? Six years if I am being generous? Keith Hill: As you know, Mr Chairman, the object of the new planning framework is to deliver a new planning framework which is not only more participative but also more flexible and faster as well. I would not like to speculate about the timescale on this. The reality is that at the beginning of this year there were just under 6000 caravans on local authority sites and just under 5000 caravans on private sites. In other words, it is worth bearing in mind that the Gypsy and Traveller community does have a propensity, where the opportunity arises, to purchase their sites. If this could be managed properly I think that planning permission for a private site would certainly be in conformity with the aspirations of many of the Gypsy and Traveller community and certainly, as far as government is concerned, a less expensive option. Q327 Mr Betts: You would not be doing your review if there were not a problem out there about illegal camping, about the problems of moving people on, about the lack of transit or permanent sites; that is the issue. For all the needs assessments and the strategy being formulated, I am just not convinced that that is actually going to deliver the number of sites that are needed to deal with the problems that both the Gypsy community and the residential communities are actually experiencing. Keith Hill: Well, Mr Betts, it may not deliver a total solution to what is an age old and extremely intractable issue. The evidence we heard from Mr Treble was that only 38 per cent of authorities actually delivered sites but nevertheless the fact of the matter is that we do have the opportunity in this new framework to deliver on a more systematic basis than heretofore even though it may not be a total answer. Mr Betts: What Mr Treble said was not that it was not necessary to have a statutory duty but it was not sufficient. In other words, we had to have the statutory duty and then go on and actually use it. Without the statutory duty we are not going to solve the problems, are we? Q328 Chairman: He agreed that with a statutory duty and a courageous minister we were there! Keith Hill: You can have one of those, Chairman! Q329 Mr Betts: Which one? Keith Hill: That is for the Committee to decide. I do not think, with respect Mr Betts, that we ought to be looking for an instantaneous solution to this problem. We will do our best through a whole series of levels of approach on this matter and we will hope to make progress. Mr Stambollouin: Could I just say one thing on this? You mentioned the period of time it would take to get full development plan coverage and I understand that point, but once we have the needs assessment which incorporates the Gypsy provision and those needs assessments are accepted at a regional level and that will not take all that long. Q330 Chairman: How long? Mr Stambollouin: We are hoping to publish the new needs assessment methodology before the end of this year and we would expect local authorities and regions to begin coverage by the middle of next year and there to be reasonable coverage by the end of next year. Once those assessments are in place they will become a material consideration on appeal so if there are sites being made and Gypsies come forward with proposals for Gypsy site development then one of the material considerations will be the assessment of need. Q331 Mr Cummings: The Committee took evidence from the Association of Gypsy and Traveller Officers, an organisation which has vast hands-on experience in dealing with Gypsy and Traveller sites throughout the length and breadth of the land. That organisation argued that there should be a structured regional and national framework to organise provision and management of Gypsy and Traveller sites. Minister, do you agree with the organisation? Keith Hill: I do think it is important that Gypsies' and Travellers' views are considered regionally as well as locally because, as you will have heard - as I heard this morning - there do often appear to be regional patterns of movement. The fact is that you need to have that regional consideration because some local authorities are fearful of making provision or taking a lead because they think that others will not do their fair share and the consequences are that they are deemed to be honey pots. We certainly think that there is a real opportunity to develop a more managed and rational allocation of sites through the new regional planning framework in the shape of the regional spatial strategies. Q332 Mr Cummings: How should these frameworks be developed? How do you intend to pursue this issue? Keith Hill: In terms of the identification of need, as I tried to indicate earlier, the districts will be identifying need. That will be fed up to the regional planning bodies who will develop their regional spatial strategies and as part and parcel of those regional spatial strategies we would expect that the regional spatial strategies would identify the appropriate numbers of accommodations required in each district. It would be absolutely for the district to identify the sites. Q333 Mr Cummings: Within this framework will it be quite obvious to anyone dealing with this problem where the various responsibilities will lie? Will it be with environmental health? Will it be with housing? Ms Eastmean: We take the view that it is very much up to the local authorities about where the responsible lies. We expect local authorities to appoint a lead officer or appoint a place and make sure there are clear lines of communication. Q334 Mr Cummings: In a case like Durham where we have county councils and district councils, where would it lie? Ms Eastmean: I would imagine that it would be down to local circumstances in areas where there has been a tradition of the county council taking the lead. Q335 Mr Cummings: This is part of the problem. There are traditions all over the place. Within the framework surely we can develop something quite specific so that we are left in no doubt whatsoever as to where the responsibility lies. Ms Eastmean: We are certainly considering offering guidance. One of the reasons we have undertaken this review that has been mentioned is that we do know that there are a number of areas that we need to explore and a number of issues that need to be resolved. Q336 Mr Cummings: It is also argued that inter-agency cooperation, for example between environmental health and housing, is very poor. Do you not believe we should have an umbrella organisation who can draw these various agencies together? Keith Hill: I dare say that the short answer is that all of these suggestions and proposals will be taken under consideration within the context of the review. I think actually, Mr Cummings, our bottom line sentiment would be that these would be a matter for decision making at the local level rather than for ministerial edict. Q337 Chairman: The 1968 Caravan Act defines Gypsies. Do you think that definition is still valid? Keith Hill: We are looking at the issue of definitions as a part of the review. Ms Eastmean: I think it is a question of who you are defining it for. I think Pat Niner in her evidence made the point quite clearly that the definition is linked to what is expected to be provided. There is a difference between having a definition that leads specifically to a site's outcome so far as the planning legislation is concerned and the sort of definition that you might want for a housing needs survey to accommodate the wider needs of Gypsies and Travellers. The planning definition would necessarily be related to the land use, whereas a housing needs assessment might be related to the wider needs of Gypsies and Travellers, considering those who are already living in bricks and mortar, for example. Mr Stambollouin: As part of the review of the Circular it is one of the things we are looking at. We do recognise the greater propensity for Gypsies to want to stay in one place in order to access services and maybe travelling for part of the year and the fact that there are fewer seasonable opportunities for work. We realise that the definition does need revisiting and we are proposing to do that. In terms of planning what we would want to secure is that link to land use. Q338 Chris Mole: If you have two different definitions are you not going to have some people who fall foul of one but do not come under the scope of the other? Mr Stambollouin: We need to ensure that they work together sensibly. Q339 Chairman: The CRE, in their evidence to us, came up with a new definition. What do you think of their definition? Ms Eastmean: They have actually submitted it as an amendment to the Housing Bill and we are considering the definition but obviously, as has already been stated, for planning purposes there needs to be a very clear link to land use because Gypsies and Travellers are having their needs met outside of the ordinary system of gaining planning consent. Q340 Chairman: In the 1968 Act there was a very clear distinction between Gypsies and groups like travelling showmen. If you take the CRE definition you put those two groups back together undoing almost a hundred years of differences. Ms Eastmean: The CRE definition also includes anybody who might want to travel so it is a very, very wide definition. If you were to link that definition to the provision of a duty it would substantially increase the financial exposure or the duty upon local authorities to provide. The CRE definition would also allow for Gypsies and Travellers who may have been settled for generations in bricks and mortar to seek to have their needs met. Q341 Chairman: Is it satisfactory? Ms Eastmean: We are considering it as part of the Housing Bill process. Q342 Chairman: Under their definition presumably if I have a camper van I come under their definition if I go around the countryside wanting to find places to stop. Ms Eastmean: I think it might be a little tighter than that, but there is a concern, yes. Q343 Chris Mole: You probably heard the LGA confirming what we were told last week that there is a particular problem where county councils own land in covering the costs generated by sites because the Rent Service sets what appear to be artificial benefit levels. Are you are aware of this and, if so, what steps are you taking to address it? Ms Eastmean: Yes, we are. The responsibility for this lies with the Department for Work and Pensions and they know there is a problem. They have been lobbied quite successfully by councils and they are undertaking research into the scope of the problem and I think - although I would not want to speak for them - they are seeking to identify what solutions they can offer. Q344 Chris Mole: Do you hope to continue to work with them to progress that and what sort of timescale are you looking at? Ms Eastmean: Yes, we do. I do not know about the timescale. Q345 Chairman: Could we perhaps have a note with the timescale? Keith Hill: We will let you have a note, Mr Chairman, with pleasure. Q346 Chris Mole: The only design guide for sites for Gypsy and Traveller sites was published in 1979. Do you intend to revise the guide and, if so, when and with what changes? Ms Eastmean: Yes, we do. It is woefully out of date and is quite inadequate. We now have a great deal of experience under out belt through the Gypsy sites refurbishment grant. We have a lot of good practice evidence to draw on and also the Irish Government has produced an excellent design guide from which we will be borrowing heavily. Q347 Christine Russell: I would like to move on to site management now. You heard this morning discussions revolving around who is best placed really to manage legal sites, is it local government officers or is it the travelling community themselves? During the course of your review have you looked at the issue of management of sites and do you have any interim comments you could make as to the evidence as to who best manages sites. Keith Hill: I think it is probably quite likely that it is an issue that has crossed our path in the course of the review, but having said that I really do feel that this is again not a matter for heavy central Government guidance or certainly not edicts but very much a matter for local decision making. I found it fascinating - to quote the estimable Mr Treble - that there had been very positive experience of at least one member of the Gypsy and Traveller community in the management of sites. It seems like a very good idea but I do not think it is a matter for central Government to intervene on. Q348 Christine Russell: We have both been there as local councillors at budget meetings and argued about whether this is a mandatory requirement that we do need officers in order to manage these sites and, well, it is a discretionary power and we will leave it up to the Travellers themselves. Surely the guidance ought to be directional guidance. Ms Eastmean: Yes, it is something we are looking at and Pat Niner has certainly had a lot to add to that debate with us. Again it is an example of what works best is what works best. For example on a transit site where you have vans coming in and out you would not really expect a Gypsy or Traveller to take responsibility for that. My personal view is that that would be the role of the local authority. Likewise on a site where a Gypsy or Traveller owns the site I would not say that the local authority would have too much locus; it would be down to the individuals who live on that site to manage. If there were local authority managed sites I think there could be arguments both ways, with the local authority having a strong management input and for nominated Gypsies and Travellers to have a strong input. Again, drawing on the experience of the Irish Government they have also gone for a "what works" approach and where there are Gypsies and Travellers who are identified as having strong leadership within their communities it is natural for them to have some role in site management and can be appointed as paid site managers living on the site. Q349 Christine Russell: Have you collected any evidence that you could share with us this morning on the effectiveness of either authority managing a site? There is anecdotal evidence that sometimes when the travelling community themselves are managing a site they can be fairly judgmental as to who they allow to come onto that site - for example if there are perhaps historic feuds - whereas perhaps it is less biased if the management comes from outside the community. Ms Eastmean: We only have anecdotal evidence which is pretty much as you have described it. In some instances it works well. I think - I know it is an area that you are going to be probing later - that some of those issues are related to security of tenure on site and the freedom and flexibility that site managers have in terms of managing people coming and going on that site. Q350 Christine Russell: I think you said earlier that you thought that each local authority should have a kind of named person. Ms Eastmean: Yes. Q351 Christine Russell: What about the training of those people because we received evidence from the Association of Gypsy and Traveller Liaison Officers and they mentioned this need for training which, again, presents a problem of funding? What are your views on that? Ms Eastmean: Again we would say that was down to the local authority to prioritise its own funding needs, but we are aware of the Association and the good work they do and we also know that they run annual conferences to raise awareness themselves, but we would see that as a matter for local discussion. Q352 Chairman: On the question of local authorities managing the sites or private management, does it not reassure the neighbours slightly more if the local authority manages a site? Ms Eastmean: I think the thing that reassures the neighbours the most is that the site is well managed. Q353 Mr Betts: One of the problems that has been raised with us by some local resident groups is the difficulties with illegal encampments - anti-social behaviour, environmental nuisance that results - and the very strong view expressed to us was that they believe the authorities have the power to deal with these issues but are reluctant to use them. How would you respond to that? Keith Hill: This is on the issues of anti-social behaviour in particular, is that right? Q354 Mr Betts: Anti-social behaviour and environmental damage. Keith Hill: The evidence that we heard from Chief Constable McWhirter on this issue was very interesting. He obviously felt that the police now had, in terms of anti-social behaviour, sufficient powers on the statute book but of course the Committee was able to probe the circumstances in which police powers would be exerted. The point was made that the police have to be sure that they can effectively carry out the powers they have under statute. I think we are fairly satisfied that there is a sufficient armoury through the criminal justice system and in particular under the Anti-Social Behaviour Order provisions which can be used against individuals or groups who are causing a problem. As you know, Mr Betts, local authorities can also obtain injunctions and these have recently been strengthened by the addition of powers of arrests in cases of anti-social behaviour. Local authorities have also been given stronger powers under the anti-social behaviour legislation to investigate and tackle fly tipping. I think we need to be clear about two things. On the one hand what you need is effective management of sites - to revert to the issue we were just discussing - and I think at the same time we need to be absolutely clear that this is a community which has been incriminated against, is the object of huge suspicion and often unfounded allegation, and Gypsies and Travellers have the same rights to be protected as the rest of the community. Q355 Chairman: How many injunctions have been sought so far? Ms Eastmean: The powers of arrest and injunctive powers were only introduced on 30 June this year and we do not get data on the use of those injunctions. Q356 Mr Betts: One other thing we heard from the Chief Constable and from others is that there are powers around, there are powers under the Police Act and your guidance to local authorities will include these, but by and large there is a reluctance or inability to make the powers work if there is nowhere to actually move people on to if they are camped illegally.. This comes back to the issue about the provision of authorised sites. Keith Hill: It is partly the issue of the provision of transit sites. I think the Chief Constable was absolutely right. It is very difficult to take action in terms of moving people on if the legislation requires that there should be sites they can move on to and they are not there of course, as you know. We have had a funding stream in the past period which has been about both the refurbishment of existing sites and the provision of transit sites. Within the context of the spending review we will obviously want to look at future allocations. Q357 Mr Betts: In terms of these powers the concerns that have been expressed to us is that there are a lot of powers but not much evidence of use of them. Is some department going to be monitoring the use of injunctions, the use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders to see whether the powers that have been given are actually used in practice? Ms Eastmean: It is the Home Office's legislation and responsibility and they do monitor them although I am not aware that they actually break them down as to who they are used against. Q358 Mr Betts: One of the other things that was raised by ACPO was their interest in having a cross-cutting information system about Gypsies and Travellers who have committed environmental and anti-social behaviour offences. They say that they wrote to your Department, to the previous minister, in April 2003 and to the Home Office. There were some discussions in October 2003 with officials and then nothing. Keith Hill: I would not want for one moment to deny the receipt of this correspondence. However, my understanding is that this was felt in ODPM to be primarily a matter for the Home Office as indeed, if the Committee reflects about it, would agree. It was actually passed over the Home Office and I am not, alas, in a position to speak for the Home Office. Q359 Chairman: Have you had a response from them at all? Keith Hill: I think our expectation would be that the Home Office would communicate directly with ACPO on this matter. Q360 Chris Mole: Is it a silo by any chance? Keith Hill: It is a silo issue. Yes, I suppose it is a silo issue but at least we passed it over the Home Office. Q361 Mr Betts: So your officials have not had subsequent discussions then? Keith Hill: Officials in OPDM did indeed meet with ACPO as part of the overall review process. Q362 Mr Betts: Has there been a specific response to ACPO on this issue that you met them about? Keith Hill: No, there has not. Q363 Mr Betts: Will there be? Keith Hill: I do not think so. Q364 Mr Betts: From anybody? Keith Hill: I would expect the response to come from the Home Office. Q365 Mr Cummings: What role do you see for housing associations in the development of private sites? Keith Hill: As you know, Mr Cummings, housing associations already have powers to manage the sites but we do intend to confer a new power on RSLs to build Gypsy and Traveller sites. Q366 Mr Cummings: Will you be encouraging housing associations to take a more active role? Keith Hill: I think that the Act of conferring a new power - which, by the way, will be by order, will be in itself an encouragement for RSLs to explore that possibility. Q367 Mr Cummings: Can you tell the Committee what progress has been made on Yvette Cooper's suggestion that Registered Social Landlords be permitted to provide and manage sites with consequential access to housing corporation funds? Keith Hill: If RSLs do have the power to build sites conferred upon them then that would be a legitimate call on housing corporation funding. Q368 Mr Cummings: Do you think that group housing, as pioneered in Ireland, should be piloted in England? Keith Hill: On this occasion I am going to pass you on to Dawn Eastmean because officials from ODPM have recently visited Ireland and I think they found it to be in very many respects an extremely enlightening experience in fact. I was going to offer, if I may, to let the Committee have a note which summarises some of the observations made by my officials in the course of that visit, but on the specific issue of group housing let me turn you over to Dawn. Ms Eastmean: We visited a number of different sorts of Gypsy and Traveller accommodation on our trip to Ireland and group housing was one of the sorts of accommodation that we saw. I think we would need to caveat this by saying that the Irish are fairly far down the line in their thinking on Gypsies and Travellers and have been working with Gypsies and Travellers very closely on accommodation needs for some years. Their task force report was launched in 1995 and the provision of group homes has been an evolutionary process and I think the types of accommodation provided in the 1990's tended to be towards permanent sites and Gypsies and Travellers - like people in the settled community - have different expectations now than they had maybe ten years ago for the sorts of accommodation that they would like. Certainly the group housing that saw was really, really nice. It was a very good standard of accommodation. It basically allowed for an extended family to live together in a cul-de-sac. The accommodation was provided very much in consultation with Gypsies and Travellers. There was no feeling that Gypsies and Travellers were actually being forced into this sort of accommodation. We spoke to a number of Gypsies and Travellers who were living in the group homes, who were living on permanent sites and who had expressed a preference to move now into group houses and to Gypsies and Travellers living on tolerated sites who were waiting for the group houses to be built for them. The message that came across very clearly to us was that this is an appropriate accommodation provision providing it is what Gypsies and Travellers want. There is no use providing this sort of accommodation if it is not what Gypsies and Travellers want and the aspirations of Gypsies and Travellers vary. Q369 Mr Betts: Do you believe such an initiative would be resource intensive? Ms Eastmean: It is a resource intensive initiative. The actual plot of the group house tends to be a larger plot than that found in social housing. I think the differences between here and Ireland are quite marked in land availability. Ireland is a much less densely populated country. It does have a luxury of land use that we do not have and I think that whilst group housing could be explored here it would be difficult to provide the same sorts of accommodation as the Irish were providing. If I could summarise, the units that we saw were detached bungalows in little cul-de-sacs and I would find it difficult to imagine that you would have the same luxury of provision for anybody accessing social housing here. Q370 Chris Mole: It appears that a lot of the planning law that has been made around Gypsies and Travellers has been done on a case by case basis where challenges have been made and an agency, acting with legal aid, has been shaping planning policy through case law. Are you happy that it should happen this way? Mr Stambollouin: There is a lot of case law which has modified legislation and there are a number of noticeable cases which are frequently cited. However, I think possibly this is inevitable given the range of powers that there are for local authorities to take enforcement action in respect of planning breaches. Q371 Chris Mole: What about the situation where you have case law in England affecting Wales and vice versa? Have you taken any steps to coordinate with colleagues in the Assembly? Mr Stambollouin: We do work very closely with colleagues in the National Assembly for Wales and we certainly coordinate together. There have been a couple of recent cases in Wales which had the potential to affect England as well and we have coordinated very closely with our colleagues in the National Assembly on these. Q372 Chris Mole: You were talking earlier on about the role of regional or local structures and regional spatial strategies. Where the do not have sufficient allocation for land for Gypsy and Traveller sites, is the Government going to jump in and challenge the inadequacy? Are you going to be a brave minister I suppose is the question? Keith Hill: In that regard as well! I think, if I might say so, is a slightly premature question and you will remember that Harold Wilson quite rightly always used to say that he would never answer hypothetical questions, but I will observe that it is open for the Secretary of State to comment and react to a regional spatial strategy. Q373 Christine Russell: Can I ask you then whether you think size matters? I want to return you to the provision of sites because some of the evidence we have had has said that sites can be made acceptable and manageable if they are small sites. You know as the Planning Minister that an application for six houses is far more acceptable than 60 houses, but there does seem to be some evidence that local authorities are taking the easy way out, shall I say, and are therefore extending existing sites rather than creating new ones. Does the Department have a view on that and are there any findings coming out of your review which may perhaps encourage smaller sites rather than larger sites? Keith Hill: I will pass you on to John Stambollouian who has the detail on this, but one of the things which has actually struck me as I have reflected on these matters is that the Gypsy and Traveller community itself seems not actually to be very enthusiastic about exceptionally large sites. On the whole they communities prefer to travel and to co-exist with people of what might be described as the extended family. I think part of the rationality that one would like to see prevail on this subject is to argue that you are not looking to the creation of Cottenhams; Cottenham is an expression of failure rather than success and therefore we do need to think on a relatively small scale in terms of encouraging local authorities to think about appropriate site provision. I will let John come in with the detail on this now. Mr Stambollouin: I agree with what the Minister has said. Keith Hill: I should hope so! Mr Stambollouin: There is a question about what the Gypsies and Travellers themselves prefer; there is also a question about proportionality with the facilities available in the communities alongside which these sites are located. I think we will be seeking to give guidance in the Circular but we do not want to hand down tablets of stone because one of the key conclusions of Pat Niner's research was that the really important thing is that the Gypsy and Traveller groups themselves should be involved in this. In some cases larger sites may be appropriate but generally we accept what you say. Q374 Chairman: What was the point in getting Pat Niner to do the work? Keith Hill: Because she has informed in a very serious way the Government's consideration of these matters. If you look at the various Pat Niner recommendations almost without exception the Government has included these recommendations as part of the renew work - which is still not finalised as you know - or has acted on the recommendations. We think that it has been a valuable piece of work by Pat Niner and that we have responded in a very constructive way to her work. Q375 Chairman: But there are not extra sites, are there? Ms Eastmean: There are no extra sites at the moment but I think one of the things we have admitted is that there is an awful lot we do not know about Gypsies and Travellers. Q376 Chairman: There is an awful lot we do know and there is a problem and we do not seem to be making much progress. Ms Eastmean: The Pat Niner research was specifically commissioned to help inform the debate and I think what Pat has done for is that she has informed the debate and opened a whole load more questions which we have to consider how we are going to respond to. Keith Hill: If I might put it like this, Mr Chairman, it is true that for a number of years little progress seems to have been made on these issues and it is in acknowledgement of that lack of progress that the Government is now looking very seriously at these issues via the review. I can certainly give you the assurance that this is high on ministers' agendas. Q377 Chairman: You told us at the beginning that the Caravan Count is going to be improved. Is that right? Keith Hill: Yes, it is. Q378 Chairman: What about security of tenure as far as Gypsies are concerned? Can you tell us anything about that? Ms Eastmean: You will know that the European Parliament found against us in Commons versus UK on security of tenure issues. The current security of tenure on Gypsy and Traveller sites but it is not comparable with security of tenure in social housing and it is not comparable with security of tenure on park homes. We are considering our options. I have alluded to the two main options that there might be and we need to respond to the European Committee and let them know the direction that we wish to take. Q379 Chairman: When? Ms Eastmean: We have a six month deadline in which to respond to the Committee. Q380 Chairman: Six months from 27 May. Is that right? Ms Eastmean: Yes, that is correct. Q381 Chairman: What about employers, particularly the Government or government contracts? In Greater Manchester at the moment there is a lot of widening work going on on the M60 and it appears that a fair number of Travellers are doing the work on that site. It appears that the employer or the Government has no duty to provide sites for the Travellers who are working on that site so they just end up on any neighbouring local authority's land. Would it not be reasonable, where contracts have been let by the Government and perhaps other big construction companies, to make sure that they have a duty to provide suitable caravan sites for people who might be doing the work? Keith Hill: I am disinclined to go down that path, Mr Chairman. It does seem to me that if you say you are going to do this for the Gypsy and Traveller employees then it does raise the question why are you not doing it for anybody else who happens to come in - as I am sure is often the case - from outside to construction projects. Q382 Chairman: In the past big construction projects almost always made temporary sites available for people who were coming in to do construction work. It appears that that practice has disappeared perhaps to save money. Keith Hill: That may well be the case, but I cannot say that this one is an issue that has been put to us with any urgency. This would be a matter for the Highways Agency of course and it might well be worth your while putting that particular question to them. And the best of luck, if I might say so! Q383 Chairman: I thought you had sorted them out in your previous role! Trading Standards: it is alleged that some Gypsies do a fair amount of work on paths and tree-cutting and things like that, some of which is not up to standard. Are you happy that Trading Standards pursue bad workmanship among Traveller communities? Keith Hill: I am very conscious of the issue of courage in these exchanges, but I have to say somewhat feebly that that really is not the responsibility of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; it is, I would imagine, a matter for DTI. Q384 Chairman: On that note can I thank you very much for your attendance. Keith Hill: It has been my usual pleasure. |