Cambridge Local Plan proposes 24 new permanent pitches for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. Advocates say that is far too few, and that the shortage is hurting children’s education and stoking tensions with settled neighbours.
Assessed need across the region is more than 130 pitches over the next two decades. The gap has started a row over land use, equality and what inadequate provision costs families.
With no authorised places to stop, many families end up in public parks, on road verges and on private land. That puts them in direct conflict with residents and councils. Behind the enforcement notices and bailiff action is a less visible problem: the disruption to Traveller children’s health, welfare and schooling, which advocates trace to a planning system that has never provided enough legal places to live.
The numbers are stark. South Cambridgeshire has about 390 permanent pitches and 20 permanent plots for Travelling Showpeople. The 2024 Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Assessment found the district needs around 130 more permanent pitches over the next 17 years, just to keep pace with growing families.
Cambridge has none. The same assessment modelled a need for two pitches in the city, based on Census data on families in bricks-and-mortar housing who need traditional accommodation. The City Council has said a council-run site for two pitches wouldn’t be financially viable, though it has said it will consider proposals that come forward through private planning applications.
Against that, 24 pitches is a fraction of identified demand. Community representatives say allocations this size ignore multi-generational families, who need room to grow as children get older and start households of their own.
None of this is new. For decades the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller population has outgrown the authorised land available to it. Families who want to keep a traditional way of life often buy private land, apply for planning permission and are refused. They end up back on the road, in a state of constant movement that many never chose.
The worst effects show up in the classroom. Education professionals and national charities agree that the threat of eviction makes steady learning close to impossible for children on unauthorised encampments.
Department for Education data for 2023 shows that 16 per cent of Gypsy and Roma pupils and 31 per cent of Irish Traveller pupils got a standard pass (Grade 4 or above) in GCSE English and maths. The national average across all pupils was 65 per cent. Absence and suspension rates for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children remain disproportionately high, which is largely down to the difficulty of moving between districts.
Getting a school place requires a fixed address. When councils or private bailiffs move families on at short notice, children lose their classmates and their teachers. Enrolling mid-term is hard for parents, some of whom struggled with school themselves. Schools find it hard to track progress, and so to target support, when families have no fixed address and can disappear overnight.
Even when a temporary place is found, worry about an eviction notice often wrecks concentration and attendance. Children come to expect disruption and drift away from mainstream education. Roadside encampments have no reliable internet or electricity, so homework goes unfinished and the attainment gap widens before pupils sit an exam.
Advocates say stability underpins achievement. Without a legal place to park a caravan, they argue, it can’t be provided.
The shortage reaches well beyond school. Without an authorised site, families lack sanitation, running water and reliable refuse collection. Finding clean drinking water and disposing of waste safely is hard on a roadside or an industrial estate.
Healthcare suffers too. Registering with a GP usually requires proof of address. For families always on the move, check-ups, childhood immunisations and postnatal care often get missed. Health visitors struggle to find families once they’ve been moved on, so people end up in hospital emergency departments for routine problems.
Life expectancy in Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities has historically been significantly lower than in the general population. Stress, poor living conditions and barriers to primary care mean chronic conditions often go unmanaged.
For settled residents, the lack of sites means caravans on village greens, recreation grounds and business parks. The friction is a regular feature of Cambridgeshire local politics. Residents and businesses often complain about lost public amenities and the clean-up costs that sometimes follow.
Authorities mostly respond with enforcement. Councils and landowners regularly use Section 61 powers and court orders to evict families, which takes time and public money. Councils spend significant sums each year on bailiff fees, legal costs and site clean-ups.
Advocates call this illogical. They say the money would be better spent building the transit sites and permanent pitches the region needs. Moving a family from one parish to the next fixes nothing. The problem just lands in a neighbouring postcode.
The 2024 assessment recommended that councils take a flexible approach to unauthorised encampments, using negotiated stopping or temporary transit sites. Under negotiated stopping, the council and Travellers agree that the Travellers can stay on suitable unused land for an agreed period, in return for following codes of conduct and waste disposal arrangements.
It has been trialled successfully elsewhere in the UK, where it reduced community tensions and enforcement costs. Greater Cambridge has almost no formal transit provision, so eviction remains the default.
The councils face a hard balancing act. The local plan has to weigh housing demand, environmental protection and infrastructure limits. Finding suitable land for Traveller pitches is notoriously difficult. Sites need access to primary schools and healthcare, and they can’t overload village infrastructure or breach Green Belt constraints.
Policy H/GT in the draft plan sets strict criteria for new pitches on unallocated sites. Proposals must show a clear need, be in a sustainable location, respect the scale of the nearest settled community, and offer a suitable environment, free from contaminated land or poor air quality. The criteria protect living standards but sharply cut the amount of viable land.
Planners rely heavily on private landowners to bring plots forward. If owners won’t sell for this purpose, or the price is inflated by the prospect of ordinary housing development, councils struggle to deliver. Land in Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire sells at a premium, which makes Traveller sites very hard to fund for private individuals and public bodies alike.
Critics say the political will is missing. Large housing schemes for the settled community routinely clear viability and infrastructure hurdles, they point out. That the same resources and determination aren’t applied to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller accommodation looks to many like a question of priorities, not planning constraints.
The plan will shape development across the region for the next two decades. As consultation continues, stakeholders from all sides are urging planners to look beyond the headline numbers and address the inequalities in the region’s housing strategy.
For settled communities, a network of permanent and transit sites is the only sustainable way to reduce unauthorised encampments and the friction that follows. Enforcement alone has been expensive and has failed.
For Gypsy, Roma and Traveller families, the gap between the 24 proposed pitches and the 130 identified by the council’s own evidence base represents dozens of families left without a legal place to live. Until it closes, children will keep facing barriers to education, health outcomes will stay unequal, and families will stay caught in the cycle of eviction
