A LONG-running saga over a controversial Herefordshire travellers' site has been resolved, writes CATHERINE SHOVLIN.

But the outcome of a planning inspector's report to determine whether planning permission should be refused or granted has brought mixed fortunes for both sides involved in the wrangle.

Farmer Robert Grayburn brought two appeals against the then Leominster District Council after his hopes of keeping The Yoke at Upper Hill as a 'travellers' haven' had been shattered.

Two local people living nearest to the area supported Mr Grayburn's application, stating that the travellers had caused them 'little nuisance'.

The majority view expressed by the parish council and residents opposing the camp because of the impact of the travellers' differing culture said that the sites were 'unsightly and untidy'.

The compromise reached by the inspector may not entirely please either side, stating that only the smallest field of the land concerned can continue to accommodate 'nomadic' residents, without being 'detrimental' to the surroundings.

A camp on the larger field, however, was said to be 'unsightly' and 'urbanising' and 'wholly out of keeping with and damaging to' the Area of Great Landscape Value.

The approved site is said to 'sit in a fold in the landscape and is relatively hidden from view'. Up to 200 travellers have set up their caravans, coaches and trucks at The Yoke since 1992 and at the time of the inquiry 26 adults were living there with seven children.

Mr Grayburn argued that if the site were lost it would affect the quality of life, health and personal security of present and future residents and the education and welfare of their children.

One of the residents was among the first 'new age travellers' to have been accepted by the courts as a 'gipsy' in the late 1980s.

But the inspector thought that relatively few of the residents had acquired gipsy status and that using the large field for 30 pitches would be unjustified.

The small field that has now been granted planning permission is to be limited to four pitches with no more than two units of accommodation on each and is only for gipsies.