Councillors will make a decision this month on whether to allow a travellers' site on land which they fought for six years to keep caravan-free.

South Gloucestershire Council is considering a planning application for five pitches at Homefield, Hall End Lane, Wickwar.

Each pitch would have room for a static caravan, touring caravan and a "day room".

The council has just spent six years and thousands of pounds fighting a legal battle to get the landowner to remove his own caravan from the site.

Hall End Lane is on a list of potential sites for travellers, drawn up by the council itself.

Councillors will visit the site on June 12 before a decision is made on June 25.

Local residents set up an action group to oppose the travellers' site.

Action group member Jan Averis, whose home is about 500 yards from the proposed travellers' site, said the council looked set to approve the application despite two previous planning refusals, two planning enquiries and a High Court action over a single caravan.

She said: "If South Gloucestershire Planning Committee vote for this development they will also set aside, as wasted, the vast sums of ratepayers' money so far used up in the process.

"Six years ago a planning application was made to allow a single residential use of a small field at Hall End, in between Wickwar and Rangeworthy just north of Yate – a very rural, isolated farming hamlet set in narrow country lanes with very limited essential services.

"Now, the planning department seems set to allow the site to be the home for five gipsy and traveller families and their extended families.

"The previous applications failed, as did the subsequent appeals. The planning inspector in his decision to refuse the appeal cited it to be 'inappropriate development'.

"Clear guidelines exist on the suitability tests for potential gipsy and traveller sites. The local residents' representatives, Hall End Action Group (HEAG), contend that all reasonable tests of suitability fail but these have been ignored by the planning department to allow this application to proceed.

"The previous reasons for refusal on this site, given at planning decision stage and at appeal, seem to have been completely set aside, although no changes have been made to the planning policies that govern the area."

She said the only difference between then and now was that central Government had told South Gloucestershire Council that it had to provide gipsy sites.

"We can't help thinking that as this hamlet is so sparsely populated, the council see this site as an easy hit," said Mrs Averis.

South Gloucestershire Council has been told to increase pitches for travellers by 2011 to stop the Government deciding the locations.