A YORK woman has criticised council planners for refusing a sports complex next to her home - after travellers who spent the summer on the land made her life a misery.

City of York Council's planning committee rejected the proposal for a £7 million Civil Service Sports Council ground at Wigginton Road, Clifton Moor, after the sports council's previous ground at Boroughbridge had to close due to dwindling numbers.

Lorna Marchi, 50, who runs York Riding School, off Wigginton Road, has hit out at the decision, saying travellers who inhabited the land in the summer left it covered with rubbish.

She said, as the site will now not be developed, the travellers will return next summer, and the land will become an eyesore.

Mrs Marchi said the council's arguments the sports complex would be an intrusion on Green Belt land made her particularly annoyed. She added: "At the moment, it's a piece of land with piles of rubbish on it.

"People seem to think of Green Belt land as being a meadow with lots of buttercups.

"But if you grew anything on this land it would get polluted by the road anyway.

"This so-called Green Belt land - if it becomes derelict it just becomes an eyesore.

"A sports complex would have been a good use for the land - I can't see why they want it to stay the way it is."

Responding to council claims the new complex would have affected views of the Minster, Mrs Marchi said: "Who on earth is going to look at the Minster from the north?

"I can only see it if I crane my neck. If somebody was going to be standing on a pole trying to see it, then they might."

Ann Reid, the council's executive member for planning and transport, said: "It is a Green Belt site. Just because a site is used for something that somebody else does not like is not a reason to give it planning permission."

Christine Shepherd, co-ordinator at York Travellers' Trust, said: "The family at Clifton Moor are a family that we have not worked with.

"We would only work with them if they are referred to us or if they came in to see us."

Updated: 08:46 Tuesday, October 28, 2003