Gypsies and Travellers are setting the record straight after a summer of politically-motivated attacks in the media and social media, centring on the introduction of new planning regulations.
The attacks started with Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch complaining about Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities “breaking laws that no one else would get away with”. They continued with incorrect claims from populist politicians that the Labour government was introducing new planning laws giving GRT communities preferential treatment, and culminated over the Summer Bank Holidays in local protests about Gypsy and Traveller families trying to making homes on their own land.
“It’s very disheartening,” says Mena Mongan, LGT Community Engagement Officer. “Nothing is straightforward for Travellers. If you buy your own land, you get no fair play. There are no sites being delivered, but if you fight for sites you are being put down every single time. There is nowhere for us to go, but you are constantly being insulted and scapegoated by politicians who see you as an easy target, gathering public support based around lies.”
Kemi Badenoch’s comments in June were part of a speech about equality, where she claimed that institutions like the police were too worried about accusations of racism and that groups like Gypsies and Travellers were getting preferential treatment. In response, LGT and 25 other groups representing the GRT communities issued a statement expressing “profound concern” about Badenoch’s words and stating that criminal responsibility should never be attributed to entire ethnic groups rather than individuals. Such words reinforce stigma and legitimise discrimination, they said.
The anti-Traveller narrative continued from politicians of the right, as the media amplified Conservatives condemning new planning regulations announced by the Labour Government. Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith claimed that new regulations were the initiative of Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, who was giving Gypsies and Travellers preferential treatment so that they could “invade green spaces, concrete over land illegally over the course of a weekend, flout planning regulations” at the expense of the “law-abiding”.
The reality is very different, points out LGT. The planning regulations announced by Angela Rayner in August are the long-awaited reformed National Planning Policy Framework (NPFF), informed by planning experts and community-based organisations such as LGT over several years. The NPFF seeks to create the conditions for more homes to be built, so that everyone, including Gypsies and Travellers, can have a home.
The new regulations generally make it harder to get retrospective planning permissions granted, especially if the developer intentionally builds without permission. Gypsies and Travellers have often relied on retrospective planning permissions because it is much harder for them to get permissions than other applicants, according to government statistics.
On the other hand, the new NPPF does allow accommodation to be built outside residential areas if a local authority has not provided or permitted enough culturally suitable accommodation for Gypsies and Travellers and there is evidence the community’s needs are not being met.
LGT has welcomed the new planning framework because it acknowledges the fact that councils are not providing culturally suitable accommodation for Gypsy and Traveller families, so they have nowhere to go.
“This NPPF intervenes in the housing sector in a positive way to deliver more homes where the system up to now has failed,” says Nancy Hawker, LGT’s Policy and Research Officer. “This is urgently needed to fix the homelessness crisis.”
“Making provisions for culturally suitable accommodation for Gypsies and Travellers is not making an exception from the law: it is stating that the planning system should take precautions to not push specific ethnic groups disproportionately into homelessness. The planning system has been discriminatory for decades.”
It is a shame, she says, that Labour ministers have not made this clearer, but instead have responded to opposition attacks in kind, stating that “The government is cracking down on illegal Traveller sites”.
“Rather than hide behind the strong rules, we would like to see the government take responsibility and stand up for the principle that what is fair is what is equitable: not everyone can suitably live in semi-detached villas.”
In spite of this, some settled communities have responded to the media attacks with protests about Gypsies and Travellers building on local land. On the August Bank Holiday, hundreds of villagers from Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, gathered to stop home construction work on a piece of land owned by Travellers.
“Sometimes families get the money together to buy a piece of land and do their own thing because the council is not providing sites for them,” says Mena Mongan. “Maybe they don’t know about planning law, and maybe they’ve tried and given up. People are so disheartened. They just want somewhere to live, but they just end being shamed and insulted.”
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