COUNTY Hall officers have been sent back to the drawing board over plans for a travellers’ site for the Great Dorset Steam Fair.

A recent meeting at Dorset County Council ended with pledges to set up a special panel to consider the location of a site for gypsies visiting the fair each September at Tarrant Hinton.

Councillors on the community overview committee voted to set up the three-man “policy development panel” after an outcry from steam fair bosses and villagers from nearby Monkton and Launceston.

The existing site - a field on the eastern side of the C25 road, south of Hyde Hill - will be withdrawn from use by the landowner after the 2011 steam fair.

DCC's business development manager Mike Evans said he felt sufficient consultation had already been carried out on the 17 sites submitted to councillors for consideration at a meeting last Friday.

“We have been looking at sites for this purpose for approaching 10 years,” said Mr Evans.

“For five of the last six years, we have been able to provide a field to move travellers from undesirable locations. It has worked really well.”

But steam fair bosses and Monkton and Launceston residents all spoke against continued use of the field near the C25 – including the field’s owner, Robin Hooper.

In a joint letter to the committee, steam fair MD Martin Oliver criticised the recommendation of Mr Evans’ report, and Mr Hooper announced that he would withdraw his field from 2011.

Mr Oliver told the Daily Echo: “We have been down this road two or three times already and arrived at similar answers. The Oakley Farm site has come out as one that it is most suitable.”

He added that both he and Mr Hooper had been “extremely disgruntled” to learn from a third party that planning permission for permanent use of the field had been recommended to councillors.

Monkton villager Brian Wizard said recommendations to the committee had been changed on the morning of the meeting, and that site selection criteria had not been discussed by councillors.

He said villagers drew little hope from the formation of the policy development panel, and said he had yet to be convinced that the current site would be withdrawn.

Monkton and Launceston people backed the use of the Oakley Farm site, which had been used successfully for a music festival, said Mr Wizard.