Gypsy, Traveller and Travelling Showpeople Development Plan Document

Disagree

We do not agree with the palatial approach to day room design. The mobile homes are often over 15 metres long with bedrooms, bathrooms and a kitchen. The Dayroom is just a day annex not a residential unit. So many day rooms have a footprint of a bungalow with playrooms, dining rooms, studies etc which in reality later become bedrooms of a residential dayroom, as we have experienced in Ulcombe. MBC needs to limit the size of a day room and to include just one room plus a small kitchen and toilet, because modern mobile homes usually have all the necessary living facilities. Rather than saying in policy TR8 that “Dayrooms and Amenity blocks should be appropriate in scale”, MBC should put a maximum size for such additional buildings to avoid usage abuse. This could reduce the size of the pitch. Should day rooms and amenity blocks even be necessary with such large well equipped mobile homes these days? We completely disagree with the day room designs. These designs are open to abuse and they could easily become residential units. Enforcement will not be able to control the unauthorised use of day rooms if they become residential.

Agree

We basically agree, but MBC needs to expand its Enforcement Team, and if there are any breaches of the allocation agreements resulting in appeals, then MBC should be prepared to robustly evict and have a budget to cover judicial reviews if Inspectorate Appeal decisions go against MBC. We think the monitoring of traveller children's education needs should be added. So many traveller children leave school after primary school. As MBC is finding accommodation for G&Ts, we think MBC has a duty to protect the children's legal rights. It is a legal responsibility of local authorities to monitor and oversee home working until school leaving age. This is a KCC responsibility, but we think MBC should monitor KCC’s actions in fulfilling their legal responsibility to the traveller children. Unless there is legislation, it is illegal to allow traveller children not to go to school, and not to monitor home working to school standards. CONCLUSION Finally, we would plead for Ulcombe's situation to be regarded as a special case in the planning and allocation of future G&T pitch provision. Given our position at the top of the list of existing G & T sites by percentage of population, not just in Maidstone, but also in the wider context of Kent and the UK, we feel we have made more than a generous contribution to the accommodation of G&T families. The fact that these families live in a parish like ours with no services makes it all the more obvious that any future expansion would be unsustainable. We therefore believe that Ulcombe cannot take any more G&T pitches and fervently hope that MBC will take this on board.