ELDERLY and disabled Witney residents are fighting to stop drunken revellers urinating and having sex outside their homes.

The Queen Emma’s Dyke residents had complained the disorder was getting worse, with one having described it as like “living in World War Three”.

But, after contacting the Oxford Mail last week, the “war” could be coming to an end, as Cottsway Housing Association, which owns the sheltered housing complex, has put up a gate to stop people getting into the communal garden.

Police have also increased the number of officers on patrol in the town on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

Resident Jonathan Keen, 59, said of the trouble: “They were urinating through our gateways and throwing bits of food through. The whole place stank of urine.

“And there’s a tree outside my bedroom window where people were having full-blown sex.”

The problems happened between 2am and 2.30am on Saturday and Sunday mornings, he said.

Mr Keen, who has mobility problems and battled cancer last year, said: “It was quiet as a grave last weekend and Cottsway is building a great big, six-foot high gate.

“It is too soon to really judge on it – we need to judge over two or three weeks – but last weekend was brilliant.”

Christopher Deane, 70, who likened the trouble to “World War Three” said: “Last weekend was the first time since I lived here that the weekend was so quiet.”

He said of previous weekends: “At three o’clock in the morning there were people fighting, making sex, and peeing and putting half-eaten food through people’s windows.

“It was getting out of hand and it was quite frightening. People in their eighties and nineties were terrified.”

In a new approach to tackling night-time trouble, police were stationed at four points around the town centre where incidents might occur.

Chief Inspector Colin Paine, the police area commander for West Oxfordshire, said he was considering moving officers to areas away from the town centre at times people were walking home.

He said: “I want to take account of routes home, of features like bus stops where people might congregate, to address antisocial behaviour.”

Cottsway Housing spokesman Dee Hempstead said: “The residents made us aware last month of the problem of antisocial behaviour near the sheltered housing scheme.

“We have installed a six-foot wooden, lockable gate and fence panels to restrict access to the courtyard.

“This replaces a three-foot metal gate.”