On 21 My 2025, a meeting of West Berkshire Council’s (WBC) Western Area Planning Committee met to consider three applications, one of which was 24/01999/FUL for “Change of use of land to gypsy and traveller site – one pitch at Mount Pleasant Farm, Enborne.”
This statement was to have been read by a representative from Enborne Parish Council at the meeting: unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding about the deadlines for expressing a desire to speak, this wasn’t possible. Enborne PC’s final official statement on the matter may vary from this. However, as this would have been a public document were it to have been delivered, we’re happy to reproduce it below in full.
We live in a plan-led system. What this means is that we make policies, including decisions about the most sustainable location for development, in the round.
Plan-led systems enable joined-up thinking. They enable sustainable development by ensuring it meets the needs of our communities and it also ensures we plan properly for future generations.
That’s the theory.
In practice, it doesn’t always work like that. In practice, local councils have limited resources, competency or political will to do the work needed to plan properly. As a result it’s quite often difficult to find sufficient land for controversial development. For example, at the start of 2025 it was estimated that 189 local authorities could not show a five-year land supply to address housing needs in their area.
The problem for the travelling community is particularly acute. They suffer from prejudice and discrimination and settled communities often strongly resist new traveller sites. In West Berkshire we have seen a significant failure to secure sufficient land for new traveller accommodation over several years (and administrations). More can, and should, be done to properly plan for the needs of the whole community and Enborne Parish Council stands ready to do its part.
This context is important because the case officer’s recommendation in this application, familiar as he will be with the lack of a longer term plan for traveller sites, is no doubt influenced by a consideration, and desire to help plan for the needs of the traveller community.
And Mr Butler is an exceptional planner. Experienced in handling traveller related applications, WBC is very lucky to have his services and the planning committee is right to presume that his recommendation and judgement should most often be followed.
So Enborne is mindful of the bigger picture here. According to the needs assessment, West Berkshire needs more traveller sites over the longer term.
Enborne’s question to councillors this evening is simply does WBC want to be a plan-led authority; or are councillors content to accept development on a ‘first come first served’ basis?
Mr. Butler’s report is unequivocal: “…there is no shortfall in the short term, and the Council can demonstrate a five-year supply of sites…the provisions of paragraph 11d of the NPPF (i.e. the tilted balance) does not apply.”
In plain English, this means that you have to treat this application as you would any other. You do not have to approve it just because it’s a traveller site.
And you shouldn’t approve it just because Enborne is not AONB (National Landscape). We are already getting the impression we are being thrown under the bus for that reason.
If a local settled family applied for planning permission for a bungalow on the site, it would be inconceivable that this application would be recommended for approval for all of the same reasons that objectors have raised and that are summarised in Mr Butler’s report. Any of those reasons on their own – whether sustainability of location, highways safety, ecological impacts or the character of the area – would ordinarily be enough to warrant refusal.
Whilst we acknowledge planning policy for travellers is different – perhaps ‘permissive’ – that needs to be balanced against the needs and concerns of the settled community.
If you approve this application this evening, against the overwhelming wishes of the settled community, you will be reinforcing a local perception of an entirely unfair planning system.
We are asking for fairness. We are asking our democratically elected representative to also speak for the settled community.
WBC recently conducted a call for sites for Gypsies and travellers,. The results are not published but we ask that you refuse this application and that the site be considered in the proper way alongside other submissions made in the plan-making process. That would not only be fair and proper towards other prospective traveller sites in West Berkshire, but would uphold the plan-led system upon which we all rely.
