A working party has been set up to consider potential new gipsy and traveller sites in North Somerset.

The district council has to provide 36 new residential pitches and 10 transit pitches by 2011.

Six councillors have now been given the job of looking at sites across the district where camps could be created.

The working group, drawn from several other committees and panels, will spend the next few months assessing where the new sites could be.

Councillor Ann Kemp, who is on the working group and is also chairman of the authority's adult social services and housing committee, said: "We are still in the very early stages and we do not have any idea about where these new sites could be.

"However, I can promise our search will be conducted properly, openly and with plenty of public consultation."

The number of transit pitches is likely to be split into two, with one camp in the Weston-super-Mare area and the other in the north of the district.

Mrs Kemp said she and other working party members would be looking to learn from others' experiences.

"We will be visiting sites run by other authorities across the South West to see how they have done it and perhaps learn from them if any mistakes have been made in the past," she said. "We have no choice but to provide these extra sites and if we don't decide where they should be, then the Government will step in and make the decision for us."

Travellers have caused havoc across North Somerset in the past, setting up illegal camps and staying for weeks before being moved off by court orders.

The council was left with a clean-up bill of thousands after caravans moved onto Marshall's Field in Clevedon a few years ago.

Travellers also left a trail of mess and destruction behind them when they set up home on parkland at the rear of The Elms in Wraxall in 2005.

North Somerset Council, which has eight permanent sites but no transit sites, has since carried out work at both sites to improve security.

But now each local authority in the South West has been told to provide more transit and permanent sites.

In South Gloucestershire the authority has to provide an additional 53 residential sites and 25 transit pitches by 2011.

The authority already has two official sites in Highwood Lane, Patchway, and in Old Gloucester Road, Winterbourne.

It hopes to find room for some of the extra pitches by intensifying the use of existing camps, but new land is also being considered.

In Bristol, councillors are faced with having to provide 24 new permanent sites for travellers and gipsies.