Winchester residents are belatedly drawing up the battle lines to oppose plans for a controversial hostel in their street.

People in Highcliffe are unhappy that a hostel for ex-offenders is earmarked for a garage block in Fivefields Road.

Last night more than 60 residents made their feelings clear with a show of numbers by the garages. Their placards read "Hands off Highcliffe'' and "No Hostel Here''.

Eastleigh Housing Association and Southampton based Two Saints want to operate the hostel for six former prisoners to help them settle back into society.

Local people say the estate, reckoned to be the poorest in Winchester, already has enough problems without a new one.

Their campaign is growing just as people in Stanmore are celebrating the dropping of a plan by Eastleigh Housing Association for a hostel in Thurmond Crescent, revealed in the Daily Echo yesterday.

More than four hundred people have now signed a petition to be handed into the council, which is considering the planning application.

Jenny McLachlin, of Fivefields Road, said: "We are fed up with being dumped on.

"We are not Nimby's. We say there are better areas."

One major source of sensitivity is the case in the mid-1990s of two alleged paedophiles who lived in Fivefields Close, Highcliffe, who committed suicide on the day of their trial.

The family of two of the victims still lives on the estate. The father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: "We don't want this hostel and neither do my boys. They tell us no paedophiles will be there but how can they be sure?''

John Callaway, the area manager of Two Saints, said: "It is understandable that people have concerns about it. It goes with the territory. People need reassurance that this hostel will be managed well."

Mr Callaway has written to 50 local people insisting that the hostel will be well managed. The hostel has been proposed because local authorities have the obligation to provide housing to "vulnerable'' groups under the 2002 Homelessness Act.