FURIOUS parishioners aim to evict a group of travellers who are trying to make their caravan site permanent.

Residents in the villages of Upper Moor and Lower Moor, near Pershore, are outraged by a planning application to make land off the Wyre Piddle bypass a legal caravan site.

Nine traveller families want the two-acre plot to be their home, but local people have reacted bitterly to the idea.

They claim the travellers' presence would be detrimental to the area and have warned Wychavon District Council not to use the village as a "dumping ground" again - the area is already home to a council tip and a burial site for animals killed in the foot-and-mouth outbreak.

"We have been through an awful lot already and I do not think it would be fair to pass this planning application," said Maureen Godard-Key, of Church Lane, Lower Moor.

"I grew up in a village which had a similar site and I witnessed at first-hand the effect such a settlement has on the value and saleability of properties.

"A small village cannot cope with the capacity of such an influx. And what's more, we are already being used as a dumping ground.

"Not only was a council tip set out on the horizon of our landscape, but thousands of infected carcases were buried less than a mile away."

The travellers set up camp on the land, which is owned by another traveller, in September.

Wychavon District Council took out an injunction amid reports that hard core and an electricity supply was being set up on a field adjacent to Duffledown Farm.

The families moved on to the land six days later and immediately submitted the planning application.

Hill & Moor Parish Councillor Olivia Smith has backed residents in their quest to remove them.

"Firstly, what they have done is wrong - they do not have the right to be there in the first place," she said.

"The travellers spout on about their human rights, but what about those of residents? We just do not want them here."

Wychavon District Council's development control committee was due to consider the application later today.

And while councillors have been recommended to refuse the plans, they have been told they can only do so on the grounds the caravans would be unsightly.