The leader of Waverley Conservative council group has launched a scathing attack on Angela Rayner’s “soft touch” planning reforms amid a crackdown on illegal traveller sites.
Speaking to GB News, Councillor Jane Austin hit out at the Housing Secretary’s plan and declared the Government must take “decisive action” on the issue.
Ms Rayner unveiled her plans on Monday to soften planning rules and remove powers from local councils across England.
The changes would make it harder for both residents and councils to oppose applications for retrospective permission for illegal camps, such as traveller sites.
The new guidance removes requirements for councils to consider “potential environmental damage” and “provide a settled base that limits the need for long-distance travelling” when assessing applications.
Highlighting the significance of the issue in her local area, Ms Austin told GB News that there are almost 150 illegal sites alone in Waverley.
She said: “It’s a massive issue actually, I would say it’s one of the top issues we have. The issue with this is it’s a planning problem.
“We have hundreds in Waverley, we have the sixth highest number of unauthorised traveller sites in the country, 149 unauthorised sites, up from seven in 2023.”
The councillor declared that the system is “being abused” by a minority of people.
Ms Austin told GB News: “Planning law is being abused by a minority of people, and we live in a rural area. My residents, they’re afraid that the field that they went to sleep looking at, they wake up the next morning and they’re going to find a traveller site on there.
“And the problem is that our planning system at the moment is just completely vulnerable to this, because there are not the safeguards in place to protect residents or the land that we all want to protect.”
Criticising Ms Rayner’s reforms of the planning system, the Tory councillor branded the move a “very soft touch approach” to what is now a “two-tier” system.
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She told GB News: “We’ve seen Labour’s new planning reforms over the weekend, a very soft touch approach to this. What we need is decisive action.
“We need prevention of people being incentivised to do this in the first place. So if you know that under a Conservative Government a site like this is not going to get retrospective planning permission for it, then that disincentivises the whole process from happening in the first place.”
Challenged by host Andrew Pierce on how “a council physically kicks travellers off an illegal encampment”, Ms Austin made clear that the “two-tier” system is making that element the “biggest issue”.
She explained: “It feels like a two-tier system to the residents that I represent, because it even if someone goes on to a piece of land, then retrospectively applies for planning permission, it can take months, even years for the planning process to take effect.
“So you have a system where it’s three months to get an appeal, then the planning commission reject it, and then another year to get an appeal.
“And then in order to rectify the site, lift the aggregate, move the things off site, that often has to be done at the council’s expense, so it’s the taxpayer who ends up paying.”
A spokesman for Waverley Borough Council told GB News that it “actively investigates and takes legal action against unauthorised developments and caravan sites”.
In a statement, a Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government spokesman 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.”
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