Rayner planning reforms that would limit councils' power to refuse traveller sites

The Deputy Prime Minister is preparing planning reforms that critics say would make it harder for councils to refuse applications for traveller sites. The Daily Mail reports Labour is "making it easier for travellers to set up new camps", while GB News says councils would "lose power to stop encampments".

The changes appear to relate to permitted development rights - the mechanism that allows certain building work without full planning permission. Angela Rayner's department hasn't published the detail, but the implication in the coverage is that traveller sites might gain a lighter planning regime, similar to agricultural buildings or changes of use that already bypass full council scrutiny.

Permitted development was invented to speed housebuilding. It now covers everything from barns to data centres, and every extension of it follows the same pattern: ministers say it cuts red tape, councils say it removes their veto, and the question underneath is always the same - who decides. The planning system is a standing tension between local consent and national policy, and this is another turn of that screw.

The test will be in the statutory instrument when it arrives. If the reform genuinely removes a council's ability to refuse a site on local grounds - traffic, capacity, character - it's a centralisation. If it only standardises criteria or speeds a process councils still control, the objection weakens. The devil, as ever, sits in the schedule.