Residents fear the approval of more than a dozen new homes between Nailsea and Backwell will “open the floodgates” for developers.

Clifton Homes said the 11 houses and three bungalows on grassland off Youngwood Lane would help meet the housing shortfall in North Somerset and have no impact on the 'strategic gap'.

But Nailsea Town Council and many of the nearly 100 other objectors disagreed, warning the project would set a precedent for further developments between the two settlements.

Clifton Homes said in its application: "In light of the lack of delivery across North Somerset, worsening affordability and an overall increase in housing need anticipated to be required, there is clearly a substantial need for both market and affordable housing in this location and the proposals would be able to contribute towards this need within the next five years.

"A development of this scale, which sits within a well-contained parcel of land and has been designed sensitively to ensure that views of it are limited from surrounding visual receptors, would cause no adverse impact to the strategic gap."

It said the site was sustainably located and only forms a small part of an “extensive area” between Nailsea and Backwell.

One objector said: "If this proposal goes ahead it will open the floodgates for developers to build ever closer to Backwell. We really need to keep the existing boundaries as they are."

Another said: "The trivial dismissal of the argument for allowing intrusion into the strategic gap is also unacceptable.

"If the logic of this is followed then any number of small piecemeal developments can and will take place, each of them nibbling further into the strategic gap until it becomes meaningless."

A third person added: "The harm this development would cause to the gap has led to objections from both Nailsea Town Council and Backwell Parish Council as well as by residents from both communities.

"How can we believe in North Somerset Council’s commitment to local democracy if these are all ignored?"

Despite the objections the application was approved by councillors in July and finally signed off by officers this month.