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The Vale Says No campaign hope to turn the current application to test drill for gas at Llandow in the Vale of Glamorgan into a test case.

It is calling on members of the Vale's planning committee to either turn the application down or refuse to make a decision when they meet to discuss the plans.

The man behind the plans for Llandow is former miner Gerwyn Williams.

He's the chairman of the UK Onshore Gas Group, which includes the ownership of a number of companies with licences to explore for petrol and gas across South Wales and beyond.

The proposals before the Vale of Glamorgan are Mr William's second application to drill at Llandow after an earlier plan was withdrawn.

That initial plan provoked widespread local opposition in Llandow and the surrounding area as the supporting information provided with the application referred to shale gas.

Shale gas is trapped in rocks deep below the ground. Its extraction involves horizontal drilling and fracking - the hydraulic fracturing of the rocks with a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals.

The technique is widespread in parts of the United States, but has proved controversial on environmental grounds, with claims that fracking has resulted in sickness and the pollution of water supplies.

Campaigners in the Vale of Glamorgan are calling for a nationwide moratorium on the process of fracking while the potential risks in the UK are properly assessed.

But Gerwyn Williams - who has carried out other test drills across South Wales over recent years without objection - says that fracking is still a long way off - and not now on the cards for Llandow anyway.

"We're at the exploration stage at the moment. We've no intention of fracking in the near future."

"The application we've got in at Llandow is not for shale gas - it's for conventional gas. We're going to take samples and we're going to test those samples."

The suggestion that there won't be fracking at Llandow is of little reassurance to the Vale Says No campaign.

Its founder is Louise Evans, who runs her family's caravan park, which lies 800 metres from the site of the proposed drilling on the Llandow Industrial estate.

She fears for the future if the test drill leads to the exploitation of gas.

"If it were to go to full-scale gas drilling our business probably wouldn't survive. The area would become a gas drilling area and not an area of tourism."

"We've got the National Eisteddfod here next year, the council is spending a lot of money raising the profile of the Vale. To have that blighted with gas drilling would be a real shame."

Earlier this year the leader of the Vale of Glamorgan Council, Gordon Kemp, said he believed that applications for test drilling should be dealt with at national level because the issue relates to a much wider area than local authority borders.

But Andy Chyba of the Bridgend Green Party believes that this week's planning committee provides councillors in the Vale with the opportunity to force the issue further up the political agenda.

"They won't necessarily decline it, but I'm hoping that they will refuse to take the decision and try to insist that the Welsh Government call it in."

"That would be cause for huge celebration. Hopefully it will re-focus minds in other authorities where this is happening... give them that get-out clause of refusing to take these on."