A scheme for a controversial traveller site on the outskirts of Saundersfoot that has been refused three times could now go to the Welsh Government planners on appeal.

A scheme refused in 2025 for a traveller site with one static caravan, one touring caravan, a day room and ecological improvements at Froghall Yard, Moreton Lane, Saundersfoot, was rejected again by the national park early this year.

Nearly 300 people signed a petition against the scheme, while Saundersfoot Community Council also opposed David ‘Dai’ Evans’s application, submitted by Hayston Developments & Planning Ltd.

A supporting statement said Mr Evans came from a long-established Romany Gypsy family living on an overcrowded Traveller site in Pontypool.

The statement said Mr Evans and his family had spent each summer in a touring caravan at the Saundersfoot site since the late 1980s, before he bought, cleared and refurbished it in 2023.

Previous applications were refused because the scheme would harm the landscape and there was no capacity for caravan development in that part of the national park.

A third application was refused by Pembrokeshire Coast National Park planners at their October 21 meeting.

The application said “many aspects of the site clearance were undertaken before the current owner/applicant bought the land” in 2023. It added: “It is totally unreasonable and unacceptable by the authority to place all the blame on the applicant for these works.”

Saundersfoot Community Council objected again, joined by a “significant number” of residents, including one planning agent acting for locals.

Officers told the meeting they were considering another reason for refusal: concerns over connecting the site to the mains sewer.

Lynne Garnett, of the Travelling Ahead Community Planning Project, said prejudice against Gypsy and Traveller families “is enormous, as the orchestrated opposition to this one pitch has demonstrated”. She said families in Wales were “forced into renting poor quality accommodation with no alternative” during a “chronic accommodation crisis”.

Agent Andrew Vaughan-Harries said the scheme offered major environmental improvements and urged planners to delay the decision while they investigated the foul-water problem, rather than “bringing this back for a fourth time”.

After the meeting, agent Andrew Vaughan-Harries said the third application delivered major ecological gains by planting 198 trees, creating new Pembs hedgebanks and improving the site for otters, birds and bats. He said the ecology-based reason for refusal had therefore been resolved.

He said Welsh Water had raised the question of a viable connection to sewer works 500 metres away only after two previous letters of support. The applicant had since found a possible connection chamber on his land but still needed to meet Welsh Water to resolve the issue.

He said concerns about the site’s appearance and caravan capacity remained but were, in his view, weak arguments. He added that Traveller Policy 53 in the national park’s LDP2 supported sites like this, so the team did not accept the refusal lightly.

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He said an appeal to PEDW, the Welsh Government’s Planning and Environment Decisions Wales service, was likely the fairest next step after three attempts.