DISGRUNTLED residents of a village near Selby are resorting to people power to combat vandals, joy-riders and litter-louts.

A group of villagers, including TV star Major Vernon Rees, are to form a special team to crack down on antisocial yobs, who they say are a blight on the area.

The move comes as a local farmer revealed he had removed 15 burnt-out cars from his land in the past year alone.

Martin Bramley owns Home Farm, between Sherburn-in-Elmet and South Milford, an area where there have been ongoing problems of antisocial behaviour.

His land includes the Sherburn Willows nature reserve, an area of designated special scientific interest. But parts of it are unprotected from the road, making it an easy dumping-ground.

Now residents are taking a stand. Local resident, Major Vernon Rees, who appeared in Channel 4's Wakey Wakey Campers, said: "I am proposing to get a little working party together and remove the things they are dumping."

Major Rees said the group would try to educate and persuade people not to dump litter in the area, and would also try to clean up what was already there.

Condemning those responsible for the trouble, he said: "These half-wits tend to run the cars right into a ditch somewhere, then torch them. They are just used as a sort of shrines to vandalism.

"They sit in the burnt-out wreck and drink."

Major Rees said: "The great and the good out-number the scruffy gits enormously. Around us, there's a huge amount of history and we do not want it wrecked."

James Liddle, resident of nearby Garden Lane, added: "It's a disgrace that the Willows is in the mess that it is. It should be a nature reserve where people can take their kids without litter and burnt out cars and who knows what. It did not use to be like that. Hopefully, we can find out who's doing it and stop it."

Mr Bramley used his fork-lift truck to remove ten cars in April, but there are now five more on the land. He said: "The youth of today seem to dump stuff willy-nilly, and with the amount the police and council have to do, I do sympathise with them. They try their best but I have to take matters into my own hands."

But he criticised Selby District Council for failing to help. They told him he would have to pay for a contractor to travel from Beverley if he wanted the vehicles removed. Instead, he was helped by scrap-merchant, David Carrie of Mytum & Selby.

Mr Bramley said: "If they are on my land they are my property, say the council.

"It should be someone local doing each area. It really is a farce."

A spokesman for Selby District Council said: "If cars are abandoned on private land it is the landowners responsibility to remove them. The council can remove them on their behalf, but there is a charge."

Updated: 11:24 Monday, November 14, 2005