EHJ April 2005, pages 8-11

The fevered hysteria in the press and in parliament surrounding unauthorised Gypsy encampments comes just as the government looked set to resolve the age-old problem of pitch shortages. Stuart Spear investigates

The battle lines are drawn. The Sun has declared war on Gypsies, the Mail appears to have joined suit and Tory leader Michael Howard has made the "Gypsy problem" an election issue in a bid to cast his party as the one that listens to the concerns of the people.

The irony of all this is that it has come about just as the government and the Gypsy and Traveller communities felt they had found a solution to what most commentators believe is an easily solvable problem. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has been working on a raft of policy changes using housing and planning legislation to solve what has been a recurring problem. Pat Niner, the author of a major government study into local authority Gypsy and Traveller sites published two years ago, found "the most striking impression from the spectrum of research and reports from almost 40 years is the similarity of the issues and concerns being discussed, and the resistance of the 'problems' being identified to 'solutions'".

At the heart of the problems revealed in Ms Niner's research is the lack of provision of sites for Travellers to live on. Without adequate sites communities are forced onto the road, children lose their education, health resources cannot be accessed and communities then suffer from high levels of illiteracy and health inequality. This, in turn, leads to increasing levels of prejudice and suspicion as some travellers are forced into direct conflict with settled communities.

"EHPs have always had a role in their general duties, dealing with unauthorised encampments and dealing with nuisance such as noise, rubbish and the rest," explains Gordon Partridge, principal EHO for Breckland DC and consultant to the CIEH on Gypsy and Traveller issues. "But now, because the government is placing a specific duty on our housing colleagues in a way that has not happened in the past and also on planning, refuse and so on, these disparate departments are being knitted together to solve these problems in a way the government felt was just not happening."

Many believe that the current situation has been sparked by the previous government strategy of encouraging Gypsies and Travellers to buy their own land and develop sites, a policy which has been proved unworkable. In reality, planning departments have been repeatedly turning down the vast majority of planning applications lodged by Travellers. Even the government admits "it is impossible or virtually impossible" for an application to comply with the restrictive criteria planning departments expect Traveller communities to meet.

According to Andrew Ryder of the Gypsy and Traveller Law Reform Coalition, around 80 per cent of planning applications related to Traveller sites are routinely turned down. "The planning situation allows council to have a set of criteria. If you can find a piece of land that meets this criteria then the council will give you planning permission. But the law has been used by councils to say 'no, no, no' all the time." Frustration has led a few Traveller communities to flout planning regulations, putting them in direct conflict with settled communities who are enraged by what they see as a blatant disregard for the law.

To unravel this stand off the first thing the government needed was an assessment of the scale of the problem. It found that there are around 4,000 to 5,000 vans and 16,000 to 20,000 people either in transit or without any legal place to stay (see box 1). To combat this problem, Ms Niner's report calls for between 1,000 and 2,000 residential pitches to be built in the next few years and for an additional 2,000 to 2,500 pitches to be built on transit sites or stopping places as part of a national network to accommodate nomadic lifestyles.

"This is not a huge problem," said Mr Ryder. "What we wanted was a statutory duty on councils to provide rent paying sites and help for Travellers to buy their own land because that would have sent out a clear message."

Campaigners have long been calling for the return of a statutory duty on councils to address the shortfall in sites. The duty was abolished by the Tories under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. But the government has stopped short of returning to the pre-1994 situation. Under the Housing Act 2004 it has placed a duty on local authorities to include Gypsies and Travellers in their local housing needs assessments and also to demonstrate how these needs will be met. The housing needs assessments will then feed into local development frameworks and regional spatial strategies.

"There is a lot of sense in this," explains Mr Partridge. "Travellers don't belong to a district councils or even a county council, they travel from place to place, so you have to look at the wider view. The spatial strategy looks from above and says we need 200 sites and then tells a council to provide 20 of them. That is when the planning departments say, 'OK this is where we will put them'."

In order to tackle the breakdown in the current planning regime, the government has just completed a consultation on amending planning circular 1/94, Gypsy site and Planning. The amended circular aims to ensure that suitable land with planning applications will be made available to Traveller communities. The emphasis will be on pre-application discussions to avoid confusion or breaches of planning control. Local authorities will be required to make sure sites are big enough to accommodate the planned number of caravans, along with space for commercial vehicles, children's play areas and access roads. Everyone agrees that the current guidance has failed to deliver adequate sites and in part has been responsible for stand offs between Traveller and settled communities and Traveller groups hope the new regime will go some way to solving the problem. "The new circular will place an obligation on councils to identify appropriate space and we feel this could work," said Mr Ryder.

While supporting the government's new strategy Traveller groups do, however, fear that the future hinges on the resolve of the deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, to ensure local authorities actually assess the needs of Traveller groups, using his powers under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. Unfortunately for the ODPM, the first council to be challenged by the secretary of state for failing to do so, Brentwood LBC in Essex, is becoming a cause celebre for the Tories. Local MP and shadow local government spokesperson Eric Pickles is supporting his local council which in a letter to the secretary of state last week claimed that it is "unjustified, illogical, inappropriate and wholly unreasonable" for it to be expected to prepare a Gypsy and Traveller development plan document by January 2007.

Brentwood believes it is being unfairly singled out claiming there is no clear demand for the sites. As the author of the Tories policy on Gypsies Mr Pickles has elevated this dispute onto the national stage saying that his party "utterly rejects the imposition of centralist quotas or statutory obligations on councils to provide sites". He claims that by increasing site numbers it will fuel demand from the Irish Republic, as Travellers are being forced out by recent changes in Ireland's trespass laws. "Local people should have the final say where sites go in a plan-led system," said Mr Pickles.

Traveller communities are currently following this spat between local and central government with keen interest as they believe that it will test the government's resolve over this issue. "If the secretary of state has the gitters, then in future cases the whole thing is going to collapse. But, if they hold firm and Brentwood does what it should be doing, that will encourage a lot of councils to get on with the job," explained Mr Ryder.

But many local authorities do not need encouraging. Norfolk, for example, has stolen a march on many other counties and had published its own Traveller protocol in advance of any requirement under the Housing Act. The protocol was produced by Norfolk's Traveller Liaison Group, which is made up of representatives from primary care trusts, the police, districts and the county councils along with the Traveller education service, planning and solicitors. Mr Partridge sits on this committee and believes that it demonstrates how joint working can resolve many of the disputes that arise between Traveller and settled communities.

Norfolk has five authorised sites in its county and has just applied for funding from the Gypsy site refurbishment grant to set up the first transit site in the county.

The ODPM has earmarked £8m of challenge funding for site refurbishment this year and is also planning to make funding from the regional housing pots available for site provision by local authorities and housing associations. Secondary legislation will be introduced later this year to allow housing associations to build and manage Gypsy and Traveller sites. Currently only one registered social landlord, the Novas Group, works with Gypsies and Travellers. This is another source of funding that Breckland DC will be looking to pursue.

While the ODPM is offering the carrot of additional funding and duties on local authorities to help Traveller communities it also, last month, gave local authorities additional powers in the form of temporary stop notices to empower councils to call an immediate halt to development on unauthorised sites. But with all its other strategies in place Mr Partridge hopes these enforcement powers will not be necessary. "We have these tools like the Crime and Disorders Act and Antisocial Behaviour Act, but why use the big stick when it does not achieve anything."

This is a sentiment echoed by Mr Ryder. But he is worried that inflammatory stories in the press can only have made the situation more explosive. "Now you will get stronger public reactions against Traveller site provision because of all the hysteria and there are politicians manipulating all this for their own political purposes. We need a mature discussion, when it is whipped up like this everyone is polarised and we don't get the solutions that are needed."