The Conservative Party has said it would amend the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to prevent unauthorised traveller sites gaining approval after the event, part of a five-point plan set out over the weekend that ties the pledge to the party's policy of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
Under the proposals, announced on 15 and 16 August, it would become a criminal offence to trespass with a vehicle after being directed to leave, police would be able to remove encampments at a landowner's request, and the existing bar on removing trespassers where no alternative site is available locally would be scrapped. The party says withdrawal from the ECHR and repeal of the Human Rights Act would allow it to go further than the last Conservative government and impose indefinite bans on returning to a site.
Shadow housing secretary James Cleverly said "anyone who wants to live on land in a caravan must always get permission first", with a presumption against retrospective approval. He told GB News that "everybody in the country should play by the same rules and abide by the same laws, and those include planning laws". A party spokesman said Kemi Badenoch "has been clear that everyone has to play by the same rules, and while we are a multiracial country, we should not be multicultural".
The announcement lands directly on top of a contested planning row. On 17 August, Housing Secretary Angela Rayner confirmed an updated National Planning Policy Framework, best known for its "default yes" approach to housing near well-connected transport hubs. The Daily Telegraph reported that the same document had softened rules on traveller sites, removing two tests councils and residents have used to resist unauthorised camps: the ability to weigh environmental damage caused by an encampment when determining a retrospective application, and a requirement that sites provide a settled base reducing long-distance travelling. Officials were reported as accepting the new policy "may also mean that locations not well-related to existing settlements may be appropriate".
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government rejected that reading in a same-day rebuttal, saying claims the framework would make it easier for unauthorised traveller developments to win permission were "not correct" and had "misinterpreted the policy". The department said the framework is now explicit that deliberate development without permission should carry substantial weight against a retrospective application, and that it had "removed duplication, not protections". A departmental spokesperson said: "The Government is cracking down on illegal traveller sites and it is completely misleading to suggest otherwise."
Official statistics show unauthorised caravan numbers rising. The January 2026 count recorded 29,402 traveller caravans in England, of which 4,950 were unauthorised — up 934, or 23%, on January 2025, and up 73% on the 2,860 recorded in January 2020. Most of the increase was on land owned by travellers themselves, up 18% year on year. Ministers confirmed in April that the count, previously taken twice yearly, now runs annually, with the July collection dropped — a change the Conservatives characterise as ministers having "stopped collecting the figures".
Councils already have a limited power under section 70C of the Act, inserted by the Localism Act 2011, to decline retrospective applications where an enforcement notice covers the same breach. The Conservative pledge would go considerably further, though the party has not yet specified which provisions would be rewritten.
Traveller organisations argue the shortage of pitches drives the problem. Cliff Codona, of the National Travellers' Action Group, told the BBC last week that the planning regime forces families to break the law to find somewhere to live. Research by Friends, Families and Travellers found 92% of responding councils owned or managed no transit site at all.
Reform UK's deputy leader, Richard Tice, criticised the framework on separate grounds, saying it handed power to Whitehall at the expense of councils and residents.
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