A ROMANY family need roam no more - at least for the next five years - after winning a planning wrangle to stay where they are at Child Okeford.

A government planning inspector has ruled Nelson Turner and his family can keep their caravan home on the outskirts of the village until his 11-year-old daughter has completed her education at the local secondary school, where she enrolled this term.

It is a decision which has dismayed villagers and district council planners who have been trying to oust the family from the site on Dovecote Farm, at the end of Common Drove, where they have been living in a mobile home and touring caravan for the past two years.

North Dorset District Council refused planning permission for the mobile home and caravan in January of last year and later launched enforcement action to remove the unauthorised caravans and other structures - including hardstanding, fences, water pipes and septic tanks - from the site.

Planners claimed the caravans and corrugated fencing was a blot on the landscape and wanted the land, bordering a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, restored to agriculture.

But Mr Turner, who owns adjoining fields where he keeps horses after ill-health forced him to give up work, challenged the council's decision and an informal appeal hearing was held last month at the council offices in Blandford.

And in his decision letter published this week, the presiding inspector Dennis Bradley ruled in favour of Mr Turner and issued a five-year temporary planning consent for the caravans subject to a string of conditions to limit the use of the site and improve its appearance.

While Mr Bradley shared the council's concern over the impact of the mobile home and fences on the open, rural character of the area, he said the personal needs of Mr Turner and his young daughter outweighed the harm caused.

"A return to living by the roadside would significantly disrupt her education," he said.