Gypsy, Traveller and Travelling Showpeople Development Plan Document

Provision of new public sites

Policy TR5: New public site provision

117. The Borough Council currently own and manage two public sites in the borough: Stilebridge Caravan Site and Water Lane Caravan Site. These provide 18 and 14 pitches respectively. The community here is relatively settled and pitch turnover on these sites is low. At the time of plan preparation, all pitches are occupied and a wait list is in operation.

118. The GTAA has identified a combined accommodation need on these two sites for 10 additional pitches in the first five years, and a further 11 pitches beyond the first five years. Whilst the GTAA does not establish whether or not the households specifically require affordable pitch provision, it is a reasonable assumption to make at this point. To an extent, there is also likely to be a hidden or unknown need for public/affordable pitches – much as there is in the settled community for affordable or social housing. There will inevitably be changing circumstances that occur to people throughout their lives, whereby someone currently residing on a privately owned site may have to seek an affordable pitch to move to.

119. At present, there are no public (also known as affordable) sites available beyond the fully occupied Water Lane and Stilebridge sites. To this end, Maidstone Borough Council has committed £4 million – through the Corporate Strategy year 1 action plan^[32] – to identifying and delivering a new high quality, well landscaped public site to provide up to 15 affordable pitches. This exercise is unlikely to align to the production of this plan and therefore the policy allows for the provision of a new public site or sites outside of the plan production timeline, at such a time when a suitable, deliverable site or sites is available.

120. Subject to the successful identification and delivery of this first new public site, it may be that the borough council seeks to provide additional public sites of a similar scale in the medium and longer term, to help meet any ongoing local need for affordable pitches. Previous national guidance^[33] suggests that in general, sites should not normally exceed 20 pitches in capacity unless there is clear evidence to suggest that a larger site is preferred by the local Gypsy or Traveller community.