Agenda item

This document will focus on Gypsies, Travellers and Travelling Showpeople. The Cabinet Member wishes to seek the advice of the group on the assessment of need and potential sites for the purposes of consultation.

The Head of Strategic Planning and Sustainability presented to the group. The group heard about the preparations for the publication of the Gypsy Traveller and Travelling Showpeople Draft Site Allocations of Land Preferred Strategy for a six week period of consultation. Officers explained:

·        Legislative requirements

·        National planning context

·        The new planning definition of a Gypsy and Traveller

·        The duty placed on local planning authorities by the CLG national policy document named ‘Planning policy for traveller sites’

·        The local planning context

·        Policy 21 of the HDPF: existing allocations

·        Policy 22 of the HDPF: sources of sites to assess

·        Current issues

·        The existing pitch supply

·        The updated needs assessment

The assessment of needs showed that the current requirement for pitches (or ‘backlog) totalled 47 pitches. The future accommodation needs across the next 15 years was for 9 pitches in the next five years (2017 to 2022), 19 pitches in the next 6 to 10 years, (2022 to 2027) and a further 18 pitches in the 11 – 15 year period (2027 to 2032). Together this equated to a total requirement of 93 pitches. National planning policy confirms that LPAs should identify a supply of specific, developable sites, or broad locations for growth, for years 6 to 10 and, where possible, for years 11 to 15. If the Horsham district was to only plan for the next 10 years to 2027, the total requirement for pitches would be 75.

There is a significant requirement for new pitches within the district in order to meet the assessed accommodation need and the Council’s requirements. In order to identify sites with potential for allocation a number of options had been considered as follows:

·        Existing HDPF allocations

·        Privately owned sites submitted to the Council as part of a ‘call for sites’ held in spring 2016.

·        The allocation of sites within strategic housing development sites

·        The use of publically owned land

·        Extensions to existing sites

·        The redevelopment and redesign of existing sites to provide more efficient use of the site to deliver additional pitches

·        Existing sites with temporary or personal planning permissions

It had been necessary to assess potential sites to ensure that they were suitable, available and were either deliverable (within the 1-5 year period) or developable (in the 6-15 year period). Factors that were considered included the following:

·        No significant barriers to development exist e.g. flooding, poor drainage, poor ground stability or proximity hazardous land or installation where conventional housing would not be suitable;

·        The site has safe and convenient vehicular and pedestrian access;

·        The site can be properly serviced and is supplied with essential services, such as water, power, sewerage and drainage, and waste disposal. The site must also be large enough to provide adequate vehicle parking, including circulation space, along with residential amenity and play areas;

·        The site is located in or near to existing settlements, within reasonable distance of a range of local services and community facilities, in particular schools and essential health services;

·        The development will not have an unacceptable impact on the character and appearance of the landscape and the amenity of neighbouring properties and is sensitively designed to mitigate any impact on its surroundings.

A number of site options have been considered as part of this process and the sites which are considered to have the greatest prospect of contributing to meeting Gypsy and Traveller needs were presented to Members.

At the invitation of the Chairman, officers sought the advice of the group on the following Traveller sites that had been identified for inclusion in the draft document for consultation:

Members’ discussed:

·        The infrastructure around the sites identified

·        Enforcement powers

·        Compulsory Purchase Orders

·        The next steps and the timeline for adoption

The Chairman thanked officers for the presentation and members for their views. The group supported the proposed approach to publish a draft site allocations document for consultation and to review existing unauthorised sites, sites with personal occupancy conditions and sites with temporary planning permission.