ANOTHER bid is being made to lift the shadow of eviction from caravan park pensioners who fear losing their homes.

The owner of Clanna Country Park in Alvington has asked Forest of Dean planners to grant a certificate of lawfulness to allow residents to continue to live permanently in their holiday accommodation.

Many residents, most of them in their 70s and 80s, have lived there full-time for years in breach of the site’s planning license.

Last month, more than 50 of them packed the council chamber as they tried to obtain planning permission to make the 41 static caravans full-time residences.

But councillors refused, saying it would open the floodgates to similar developments in the countryside.

Now site owner Wayne Maguire, who also runs the Glen Trothy Caravan Park in Mitchel Troy, has asked planners to confirm that enforcement action will not be taken against residents, who say the stress is making life unbearable.

Former Alvington parish councillor Anne Thomas, 77, who has lived on the site for 13 years with 88-year-old husband Curwen, said they live in “constant worry”.

“We have nowhere else to live and would rely on the council to house us if the current planning was enforced,” she adds in a letter to the council.

Dennis Hodson said: “As I’m 84 and my wife 82 this is a very worrying and stressful thing to think of.”

One resident anonymously wrote: “Having had cancer twice, hip and knee surgery, back problems, etc, the stress is enormous to deal with.”

Residents have sent nearly 20 letters to the council urging them to accept the latest proposal.

Fiona and Eric Robson, who are both in their 60s, wrote: “We are happy living here and contributing to the local economy and fear for our health and the stress it would bring if you enforce the current planning.”

Peter and Dee Harris added: “We could do without living with the constant uncertainty of what the future holds.”

Mrs Thomas told last month’s council meeting that residents were full members of the local community and paid council tax of around £40,000 a year.

“We sit on the parish council, we run neighbourhood watch and are members of the Alvington development plan,” she added: “We are members of the church, the Women’s Institute, leisure centre, volunteer at the library, work for local charities, help with the electoral register and man the polling booths at elections.

“We fully support each other and are a caring community. We are not a drain on the council. We maintain and pay for our own roads and lighting and pay full council tax, so we are sustainable.

“Please allow us to live without fear of the future in what will be for many of us the last few years of our lives.”

But councillors heard that they had been living there in breach of a 2002 planning appeal decision which scrapped the need to leave the caravans in January and February, but reinforced that they were holiday accommodation “and shall not be used as permanent or main residences.”

The inspector said they should sign a register for inspection by the planning authority, something which residents today say they have never been asked to do.

The new application is to establish whether the occupation of caravans for permanent residential purposes since 2002 is “lawful and immune from enforcement action.”