GIPSIES, residents and council planners are locked in a bitter battle over fences and lights at the gipsy site in Newent.

Residents say the site at Southend Lane is so bright it is like a mini-Blackpool.

And they packed into the Market House on Monday to hear the town council throw out the travellers' plans for how the site will be managed until they are due to leave next year.

A government inspector told the gipsies they could remain on the site until January 2012 on condition they came up with an acceptable plan covering lighting, fencing, drainage and pitch layout within 11 months.

Council officials first rejected the travellers' original plan in February this year and now the gipsies have appealed.

Newent Town Council also voted to reject the gipsies' plan for the site and asked the Forest of Dean District Council not to discharge conditions relating to the temporary planning appr- oval.

A spokesman for residents' group SLAM, which has now been renamed Newent RAID, said: "We are very shocked and dismayed that apparently the expensive stressful inquiry of this time last year means nothing at the moment until an acceptable plan has been put in place.

"Having had 11 months to create a set of conditions they have failed to deliver this. We believe that this is deliberate delaying tactics."

Residents say the plans being submitted do not address sustainability and claim the site is like Blackpool Illuminations because lights are left on all night.

Peter Williams, group manager for planning and housing at Forest of Dean District Council, said: "We are dealing with an appeal on this site and an application submission to discharge one of the conditions the planning inspector applied to the original permission.

"We have also received reports of unauthorised development on the site which we are investigating."

SLAM have joined RAID – Residents Against Inappropriate Development – a national network of groups fighting similar developments.

Chairman of Newent RAID said: "This is definitely a question of united we stand.

"Small villages and other communities who have been subject to inappropriate and unaut- horised development should take strength from the fact there are others out there who will support them."