Changes are needed within a crucial policy document to account for places for Travellers to stay when they are in Reading.
Hotspots include the area between Morrison’s and Aldi in Basingstoke Road, the Reading Gateway car park and Prospect Park in Tilehurst.
Two caravans were spotted for the first time in years at the Foxhays Road green in Whitley.
When people from travelling communities come to Reading, they often set up unauthorised encampments because there is no designated place for them to stay in the town.
Reading Borough Council had a plan for seven pitches for Travellers near the Thames Water treatment works in Island Road, but had to scrap the project in 2024 after the Environment Agency objected to the project.
Policies on space for travelling communities are tied in with the council’s Local Plan, which was adopted in 2019 and is currently undergoing a partial update process.
The partial update was submitted to the government’s planning inspectorate in May last year, for examination by appointed inspector Joanna Gilbert.
She has identified main modifications that the council must make if the local plan partial update is to be adopted.
The modifications primarily relate to insufficient evidence the council provided on the accommodation needs of gypsies and travellers and the impact of the proposed level of development on water quality.
Changes must therefore be approved by the council’s policy committee to go out to consultation.
The proposed modification states that within 18 months of the adoption of the council’s local plan partial update, the council must produce a new assessment of the accommodation needs of travelling communities, and undertake water quality modelling with the Environment Agency and Thames Water to understand the implications of future development
Then, the council must assess whether either of these matters constitutes a significant change in local circumstances.
If they do, the council will begin work on the next Local Plan.
A decision on making the main modifications to the local plan partial update is set to be made at a meeting of the council’s policy committee on September 16.
The council’s planning department has already advised against an alternative option of withdrawing the plan update from examination, as it would require work to start on the next Local Plan
Once the main modifications are added, a consultation is set to run later this month into October.
If the local plan partial update is judged by the government’s planning inspectorate to be sound and legally compliant, it will be sent to the full council meeting in January 2027 for adoption.
The council did consider a location in Richfield Avenue, near the Reading Festival site, as a place for travelling communities to stay.
However, this policy was abandoned in favour of using the land for the creation of the River Academy secondary school, which is attended by around 370 pupils.
