RESIDENTS living in Easter Compton have hit out at plans to expand a traveller and gypsy site in their village.

Travellers based at a site on Berwick Lane, known as Green Orchards, have applied to South Gloucestershire Council for seven additional residential caravans on three pitches, plus one transit pitch.

The site already has permission for one residential pitch with two caravans.

Villagers have said they are objecting to the application because the site is in the green belt, expansion will increase traffic and permission was only originally granted for the use of one family.

Janet Hiscocks, an Easter Compton resident, said: "I just feel that it's a traffic hazard. Berwick Lane is windy country lane and people already use it to avoid Cribbs Causeway roundabout and if you put an additional caravans on that site they will generate even more traffic."

One group of residents feel so strongly about the expansion that they have appointed Nigel Cant, a town planning consultant, to represent them.

Mr Cant said: "This particular site is in the wrong place. It is in the green belt and expansion like this will clearly have an effect on the people living nearby."

However, Graham Kent, another Easter Compton resident, is concerned that objections to the planning application will fall on deaf ears.

The Berwick Lane site is currently part of the South Gloucestershire Council consultation into locations for a further 78 gypsy and traveller pitches, which the council has been told to find by central government.

Mr Kent said: "I think the local consultation is purely a sham just to meet the legal requirements and I don't think it will serve any use.

"This site is mentioned in the consultation and now there's a planning application so South Gloucestershire Council will act as judge and jury on this and local feeling will count for nothing."

A spokesman for South Gloucestershire Council said: "The council has carried out consultations on this planning application with local residents and the parish council in line with its policy, which gives people a chance to comment on the proposals, before the planning application is decided.

"The government has issued a direction to the council to allocate sites for gypsies and travellers and the council is currently consulting the local community on this. The consultation on where possible sites might be allocated will run until January 29 and this gives people an opportunity to comment on all the proposals for the district as a whole.

"This current planning application will however be considered on its own merits, and entirely separately to the current consultation on the district-wide site identification process."

The travellers based at Green Orchards declined to comment on the planning application when the Gazette visited the site this week.