Fair enough, and good news. All we need is for the police to enforce it. Anyone? Anyone?
One of the biggest problems in this "lawless" country is simply a lack of enforcement.
The enforcement options relate to blocking roads, which as offence anywhere. Bit of you have 100 cars parked in a row on a narrow road, which one is blocking it? For context, if a car is speeding and then abandoned and they can't tell which of two people were driving, neither of them are charged. So good luck with all but Austin Powers type parking offenses.
I looked into the car camping and van living issue myself, and the two councils I asked said the same thing. The guidance says one thing. But the law itself does not explicitly prohibit living in a layby or next to one. So you fine or arrest someone, and risk that being the offence.
Secondary legislation is desperately needed, to refine issues such as "wild camping" to preclude anything within a certain distance from a public road or dwelling, to preclude anything for more than one night (thereby preventing people erecting semi permanent yurts with log burners etc). Camper vans and caravans need to be limited to designated sites.
None of this stops anyone going for a hike with a tent, or putting one in a boat and self propelling themselves somewhere, which was the original intention.
If you take away the high density of people exploiting the law for convenience, you also do away with problems of public defecation, because there's less of it and it's not all in one place.