The Government has denied accusations that it has relaxed planning rules for Traveller sites and undermined the power of councils to block unwanted settlements.
The Conservatives claim that the update to England’s planning rules announced yesterday mean more communities would be ‘forced to tolerate lawbreaking from a small minority of Travellers’.
Critics say that the requirements for councils to consider ‘potential environmental damage caused by unauthorised encampments’ when assessing applications and to only approve sites if they ‘provide a settled base that limits the need for long-distance travelling’ have been removed.
Sir James Cleverly, the shadow housing secretary, told The Telegraph: ‘Labour are making it easier for Travellers to set up illegal sites and get them rubber-stamped afterwards – often when they’ve already erected permanent structures.’
Announcing the Conservative’s plan for giving police more powers to ban Travellers from unauthorised sites permanently, Cleverly accused Labour of introducing a ‘two-tier planning system’.
However, the Government argues that reports claiming planning reforms make it easier to approve unauthorised Traveller sites are ‘wrong’.
In an article on the the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's (MHCLG) website, it says the updated National Planning Policy Framework is clear that where someone has deliberately developed a site without permission, 'councils should give this substantial weight when deciding retrospective planning applications.'
Traveller site applications 'remain subject' to the same policies on environmental impacts, flooding, transport and environmental quality as other forms of development, the article added.
An MHCLG spokesperson said: ‘The Government is cracking down on illegal traveller sites and it is completely misleading to suggest otherwise.’
‘Our new planning rules explicitly tackle any potential environmental damage and transport impacts and make it harder for people to get retrospective permission for development that were built without approval.’
