RESIDENTS are staring at defeat in their battle to include a village green in a multi-million-pound housing development at Eastleigh.

For two years people in Cranbury Road and Desborough Road have been fighting to have land off Derby Road officially registered as a village green.

They were hoping to keep the bulldozers out of a section of The Gardens estate redevelopment and preserve a piece of green which had always been regarded by many locals as recreation land.

But their campaign may have been dealt a major blow. Hampshire county councillors are due to throw out their bid today.

If the campaigners had been successful, Eastleigh Housing Association, which had earmarked the land for development, would be forced back to the drawing board. To win the campaigners had to prove at a public inquiry that the land had been used for recreation by residents for 20 years or more.

County council chiefs are set to come down on the side of the inquiry report which maintained that the village green supporters had not established the extensive recreational use of the land.

The applicants had given evidence of extensive and frequent informal recreational use of the land going back to the 1930s.

But objectors had said there had been very little use of the land except for people walking their dogs across the land.

Former Eastleigh councillor Bill Luffman, who represented the Cranbury Road and Desborough Road Residents' Association at the public inquiry, said he was "extremely disappointed" at the move to reject the village green application.

But he said: "I am not surprised. It seems to be the trend to cram development on every piece of land. This is the last piece of green space in this built-up area. Yet it has a history of being recreational land going back to the 1930s."

A spokesman for Eastleigh Housing Association would not comment until after county councillors had considered the recommendation.

Jackie Davenport, chairman of the United Gardens Action Group, which opposed the village green application, said: "The recommendation is wonderful news. The development can go ahead without being redesigned and provide homes for people who desperately need them."