A 20-MONTH campaign to reinstate a public right of way has been won by residents of Liftondown.

Devon County Council Rights of Way committee has reinstated a 100-yard stretch of land which runs from the A30 to a back road through the village after it was incorporated into a building plot by a developer in the early part of 2007.

Villagers were backed by the parish council and their county councillor Christine Marsh and produced documental evidence that the right of way had been part of the landscape since at least 1765.

There were also personal accounts of elderly residents who remembered their grandparents taking cattle along the route and postmen and milkman who used it to make deliveries.

'It's just an integral part of the village and many people used it because the bus stop is at the end and it is a short cut to the post box,' said campaigner Lorraine Bassett.

Mrs Bassett said 42 households in the village signed a petition and everybody had united to fight the campaign.

'It was a long drawn out process but I am grateful to everyone who helped to get our right of way reinstated.'

Banks Construction's application for two semi-detached dwellings at the site had been put on hold pending the outcome of the right of way hearing.

Mrs Bassett had been hoping that West Devon Borough Council's planning committee would have requested that the Devon bank be reinstated when it considered the plan at last week's meeting but it was not. The committee was told that it was not a traditional Devon hedge but one made up of rubble with a line of bushes on top.

Cllr Donald Horn said: 'It is an apology for a Devon bank and the request to replace it is probably a little over the top.'