More official sites for gypsies and travellers are needed to help ease conflict between travelling and settled communities, the Government says.

But in Oxfordshire, the county council says its 13 authorised sites are sufficient for the number of traveller families wanting to stay in the county.

Despite this, travellers have taken over and developed without planning permission a site at Hadden Hill, near Didcot, even though the district council says there were pitches available at authorised sites.

South Oxfordshire District Council has now won a High Court injunction and issued enforcement notices meaning the site cannot be developed any further.

It is now waiting for a public inquiry after travellers appealed against enforcement notices requiring them to remove their caravans and restore the site.

District councillor Patrick Greene, whose ward contains the site, said the council had been told that because of a backlog of work at the Planning Inspectorate the inquiry might not be heard for a year.

Council chief executive David Buckle said he did not think the new powers would have helped the council deal with Hadden Hill any differently.

He said the new stop notices did not give councils the power to remove caravans once they were on a site, but only to stop more going on -- which SODC achieved through the injunction.

New Temporary Stop Notice regulations allow councils to act immediately to stop sites being developed where planning permission has not been granted.

The Government also wants local authorities to identify more authorised sites, saying many traveller families are left with nowhere to go.

A meeting of the Oxford Fringe Forum tonight (March 15) at the village hall in Sandford-on-Thames, at 7pm, will include a discussion on the county council's approach to travellers.