A WELSH Romani Gipsy family given temporary permission to live in a rural site two years ago have called on Newport council to allow them to stay.

Hendry and Pat Price say their family has integrated into the community and that they couldn’t imagine living on a residential site.

The family has lived at their home in Coal Pit Lane, Castleton, since winning a planning appeal in 2011 against Newport council which had refused permission.

But they have been at the site on borrowed time, with the planning inspectorate only granting the family temporary permission of two years which has now run out.

Mr Price, 40, has now filed a planning application to make the site, which includes a static caravan and two touring caravans as well as horses and chickens, permanent.

The family emphasised they don’t want to start a residential Gipsy site at the location. Mr Price said: “I don’t want any other families here. Its’ taken us 20 years to build up friends. We don’t want to break that.”

The land has been with the family for some 20 years. The authority says it would not take enforcement action on the site until the planning application is decided.

Mrs Price, 39, who is a mum of six, said the situation was putting her on edge: “We’re living like a normal family but at a split second our lives could be turned upside down.

“The biggest issue was that we wanted a different lifestyle for our children. I never had the chance when I was younger to do things that I wanted to do. I wanted our children to get a good education.”

Their youngest boy Rico, aged 9, is a pupil at Marshfield Primary School.

Mrs Price, who is illiterate, said: “My children are mixing with a different community. My little boy Rico has friends from the village. I have friends from the village who call over for a coffee.”

Mr Price said the council wouldn’t be able to put him on a site: “It’s our own land. We have done what we have done here through ourselves and friends and family. We don’t want the council’s help. We only need their permission.”

Mr and Mrs Price’s family had previously been split between sites in Rover Way and Shirenewton in Cardiff, but left due to congested conditions at Rover Way and frictions with an Irish gipsy family at Shirenewton.

The police supported the family moving to the Castleton site, where they have resided since May 2011, the report said. Without a site the family would have been homeless.

The planning inspector Clive Nield wrote in 2011 that the site would be harmful to the openness of the green belt, but the family's exceptional circumstances outweighed that issue, at least for the short term.

However he said that in the long term the family’s circumstances were likely to be alleviated by the availability of accommodation. There remains no residential site for Gipsies and Travellers in Newport, despite an ongoing process to add sites to the local development plan.

A spokeswoman for Newport council said the council would not seek to take enforcement action against the site in Castleton "until the outcome of the planning application has been determined.”