01/10/2026
Do you live in a town or village blighted by unauthorised traveller sites? Wake up one morning, often over a bank holiday weekend, to find a field paved over with tarmac and caravans rolled on? This is now a depressingly regular pattern.
Everywhere, laws meant to protect our green and pleasant land are being flagrantly flouted. These lawbreakers are emboldened by the lack of effective deterrence and have convinced themselves that the law should instead be bent to their wishes.
The diligent majority of law-abiding individuals who struggle on, follow rules and stick to the laws are made to feel like fools.
Want to build a garden shed to fuel a passion for small-scale husbandry or extend your home to accommodate a growing family? Go through the correct procedures and wait years for planning – only then to see the request rejected.
Meanwhile, those who barge in are given a free ride. Caravans on unauthorised sites have rocketed up 142 per cent in the South East over the past two years.
Part of the problem is our equality laws and the European Convention on Human Rights, both of which are tying local authorities’ planning departments up in knots.
That’s why I led a group of 30 Conservative MPs to call on the Home Secretary to put together a National Taskforce to investigate the loopholes and weaknesses in our planning system. I also shared evidence I had unearthed of sites offering accommodation to illegal migrants.
After months of lobbying, I met with the Planning Minister in June alongside a cross-party group of MPs. The Government has now confirmed it will explore my request for a new construction offence for firms that deliver construction materials, hard core and tarmac to sites without planning permission.
I will also continue to push the Government to look at an outright ban on retrospective planning and fast-tracked court proceedings to cut the time and taxpayers' money wasted on drawn-out legal cases.
When a country fails to act in the face of the incremental decline in its laws and customs, it breeds resentment. People become programmed to accept lawbreaking and come to believe there is little weight in having responsibility for one’s own area.
If we cannot bring ourselves to defend what is precious – our countryside, the mutual respect between neighbours, the principle that we should all be equal before the law – then we will lose these fundamental traits of Britishness.
Fairness and true equality must prevail. That’s what our renewed Conservative Party under Kemi Badenoch will fight for.
✍🏾 Me for the Surrey Mirror
