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Category: Planning, Housing and Sites
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I’ve Found a Piece of Land — Can I Live on It? A Gypsy Woman’s Plain-English Guide to Planning Permission
There has been a lot of noise about the new planning rules. Depending on which newspaper or Facebook comment you read, apparently Gypsies and Travellers can now buy a field, pull on with a caravan and planning permission is almost guaranteed. I wish. Equally, I still hear Gypsy and Traveller families say: “It’s Green Belt.…
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PGT Statement on the New National Planning Policy Framework
Proud Gypsy Traveller CIC welcomes important elements of the new National Planning Policy Framework and, in particular, a greater recognition that the shortage of lawful Gypsy and Traveller accommodation cannot be solved through enforcement alone. Earlier this year, PGT responded to the NPPF consultation drawing directly on our planning advocacy, welfare reporting and work alongside…
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We Don’t Need Platitudes, We Need Actions
There comes a point where “we understand your concerns” stops sounding compassionate and starts sounding rehearsed. For years, Gypsy and Traveller communities have been accused of “weaponising” bank holiday weekends. The narrative is familiar. If an unauthorised development appears over a long weekend, headlines and social media commentary quickly follow. We are painted as manipulative.…
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If You Won’t Let Us Stop, Won’t Let Us Travel, and Won’t Let Us Build—What Exactly Is the Plan?
I have spent years working in planning, sitting in fields, on yards, at kitchen tables, and sometimes in silence while people try to explain their lives through tears. And here is the truth, stripped of policy language and legal jargon: Gypsy and Traveller families are running out of places to exist. Not places to thrive.Not…
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Planning Policy is Being Rewritten. Gypsy & Traveller Voices Must Be Heard.
Right now, the Government is consulting on changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). That might sound technical, but the reality is simple: Planning policy decides whether Gypsy and Traveller families can have a lawful place to live. For decades our communities have been caught in a cycle: • there are not enough authorised…
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Rebranded Existence: When the State Criminalises Our Lives but Celebrates Our Idea
Tonight I spent my time writing welfare reports. Not abstract exercises, not box-ticking paperwork, but detailed accounts of how our communities actually live. I wrote about how Gypsy and Traveller communities operate intrinsically: how we form micro-communities grounded in kinship, shared responsibility, reciprocity, and deep connection to place and land. I described how care is…
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Burn Them Out: When Public Safety is a Smokescreen for Hate
A man stands on a Traveller site. He’s a council tenant. He pays rent. He calmly explains to a news crew that the site is overcrowded, the caravans are too close, and if one goes up in flames, they all will. He asks to work with the council to fix it. What does he get…