Local MP for North West Essex, Kemi Badenoch, has pledged that the Conservatives will launch a crackdown on illegal traveller sites and tackle unauthorised developments using new freedoms gained by leaving the ECHR.
Across North West Essex, local communities are often forced to tolerate illegal encampments and breaches of planning laws, and, in some cases, antisocial behaviour and petty crime caused by a small minority of travellers. Too often, local authorities lack the powers and sometimes the will to stand up for residents and enforce the law.
The Conservatives will never sit by and accept criminality going unchecked. That is why we have developed a robust and deliverable plan to end the two-tier treatment of travellers and ensure equality under the law for all communities.
Our five-point plan will:
- Use new freedoms gained by leaving the ECHR and scrapping the Human Rights Act to back the police with the power to ban travellers from returning to encampments indefinitely, and the power to remove travellers if requested by the landowner;
- Rebuild hard deterrence by making it an offence to trespass with a vehicle after being directed to leave;
- Scrap the ban on removing trespassing travellers if no alternative site is available in the area;
- Stop the abuse of the retrospective planning applications and end the lawfare which frustrates the law being enforced;
- Reverse Labour’s changes that weaken Green Belt and open countryside protections, undermining planning enforcement and helping a small minority of traveller’s game the system.
By leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act, a future Conservative Government can impose indefinite return bans as one of several key measures to tackle the problem.
Commenting, the Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch MP said:
“Across North West Essex, law-abiding residents are suffering because of a small minority who think the rules do not apply to them. This has been evident in the disruption caused more recently in areas like Henham, Highwood and Willows Green.
“Labour have failed to tackle unauthorised traveller developments. But I have been clear that those who break the rules should be punished. This is a basic principle that must apply equally to all communities.
“The plan we have announced will give authorities like Chelmsford, Essex and Uttlesford council the backing they need to crack down on traveller lawbreaking, putting local residents in North West Essex first.”
