CAMPAIGNERS battling to stop diggers moving onto toxic land in Corsham have vowed to keep on fighting to the bitter end.

Buoyed by their recent 'victory' against council planners at a meeting last week, the Corsham Residents Group hope they are finally beginning to win backing for their cause.

Plans for a distributor road to feed a proposed 600-home housing estate on former MoD land at Pockeredge Farm and Peel Circus have been temporarily put on ice while planning officers clarify the issue over contamination.

Ardent campaigners Don and Doreen Stevenson, whose Hatton Way home is next to the land, believe public health could be put at risk if dangerous chemicals in the land are disturbed.

Notices were put up on site at the weekend detailing how the developers propose to rid the land of contamination mainly through burying the toxins deeper into the ground or by removing the earth altogether.

Residents have until May 29 to register objections to these latest applications.

Mr and Mrs Stevenson, who took a 637-name petition to a North Wiltshire District Council development control committee meeting, said there was no way they were stopping now.

Mr Stevenson said: "There were two notices put up on site on Sunday and it sounds as if they will take some of the contamination away and bury some further into the ground.

"We have contacted the district council and had all the details sent through to us. We need to decide where to go from here."

His wife Doreen said she felt 'eyes had been opened' by the group's presence at the development control meeting last week.

She said: "It feels like everything is being pushed through so we are glad there is this temporary halt.

"The councillors will discuss the plans again at a future meeting and we will be back again to make our views known.

"We are not giving up and we will fight it all the way. It seemed to me that several councillors were extremely concerned."

A council report showed pockets of contamination on the former MoD munitions factory site.

Traces of picric acid a potentially lethal by-product from the manufacturing of explosives and asbestos, were found seeped in the earth. Residents feared a 'toxic fallout' if diggers moved onto the land and began disturbing the earth.