Negotiating security of tenure for peri-urban settlement: traveller-gypsies and the planning system in the United Kingdom

Occupiers of informal unauthorised housing in peri-urban areas seek to improve their tenure security and living conditions through conflict and negotiation with the agencies of the state. Traveller-gypsies in the United Kingdom, while numerically few, have often occupied such marginal locations, and engaged with the land use planning system in protracted attempts to regularise and upgrade their owner-occupied self-help sites. This article summarises the contested identity and marginalisation of this group, and the often-inconsistent policy and approaches of central and local government towards it. The issues are explored through five case studies of the planning history of gypsy families and their sites in rural areas of the UK.