Home owners being forced to sell their homes to make way for a redevelopment have joined forces to battle the council's plans.

The 20 Orlit home owners, who are being made to sell their homes back to the council for less than their valuation so it can demolish them and build more housing, have created a residents group.

At the meeting, held in the Circle Library on Green Wrythe Lane, residents appointed a spokeswoman and are in the process of setting up a group bank account.

Spokeswomen Corinne Thwaites told the group: "The council are trying to pick us off one by one, but now, if they want to deal with one of us, they deal with us all."

This week, the first planning application was published for the redevelopment of Duke of Edinburgh Road. Six homes on the street, which are due to be demolished, along with whole of Green Wrythe Crescent, Nightingale Close, and parts of Fellowes Road, will be replaced by 10 houses.

According to the plans, six houses will be replaced with "four four-bedroomed and six three-bedroomed, two storey terraced houses (nine with roof accommodation) in two separate blocks" as well as "provision of refuse and cycle storage and ten car parking spaces".

At their first meeting, the home owners said they were "disgusted" to learn Jayne McCoy, the councillor in charge of kicking them out of their homes, had called their homes "squalid".

Hazel Wale, who grew up on Green Wrythe Crescent and whose mother still lives on the street, said: "I was horrified when I read that. How dare she call my mothers house squalid? It sums up the level of ignorance among these people.

"Politics is about the people who politicians work for, not this sweeping statistical dismissal of people."

Councillor McCoy has since apologised for her "squalid" comments.

She said: "I was mortified when I was alerted via a ward councillor that this interpretation had been put on my comment, and I immediately rang the resident who complained to apologise.

"When I used the term I was referring to those tenanted properties which are, through no fault of the tenants, damp, decaying and which have been known to flood with sewage."

Conservative Councillor Tony Shields said: "It is is about time these homeowners were given a fair price for their homes which they have worked all their lives to pay for."