By Dominic Casciani BBC News Online community affairs reporter

It's there somewhere

You can't miss the proposed site of the Bicester asylum seeker accommodation centre - hundreds of yards of fence cordon off "Site A" of the enormous Ministry of Defence holdings south of the Oxfordshire village.

Through the gate, the security guard says he can't "divulge" whether or not you have the right place, and then warns against taking pictures.

But pig farmer Michael Gurr knows it's there. He can see it from his fields. He's even put up a big sign just in case there is anyone in the area who's been asleep for the past two years.

And like the thousands who do know about it and have signed petitions, he fears the worst.

"People are worrying about crime - there's nothing for these people to do. We can see trouble coming." says Mr Gurr.

Big trouble in little villages

For two years, the accommodation centre plan has been trouble for the Home Office.

WHAT WILL BE INSIDE? Self-contained community Healthcare facilities Recreation and 'purposeful activity' Education for children Adult education Full catering services Shop and bus service Official areas for case work The trouble with asylum centres

Trials of large-scale asylum centres are a key plank of asylum policy. They aim to relieve local services by housing asylum seekers in self-contained communities while applications are considered. In Bicester's case that means facilities for 750 people.

But since the centres were unveiled, ministers have faced a pincer movement of local communities raising objections and expert refugee bodies raising yet more.

Last year ministers dropped proposals for Lee on Solent after mass street protests in the south coast town.

This Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced the other remaining alternative, RAF Newton in Nottinghamshire, was also a dead duck.

So where there were some 10 sites on the original list, today, it appears, there is just Bicester left.

But that is of little comfort to residents of Ambrosden, Piddington, Arncott and Blackthorn, the villages surrounding the site.

Some claim it was selected because it's a safe Tory constituency in the middle of nowhere. Officials say it's because it is an ideal piece of redundant government land.

"I don't understand how people can be expected to integrate if they are only here for a few months at a time," says Mr Gurr.

"We don't know where they are coming from, what their backgrounds are."

Field headquarters

Last year, the local council, which supported residents, won a planning inquiry on the centre, but Mr Prescott overruled its recommendations and gave the go ahead. This week, the residents have been back in court in a last ditch attempt to stop the centre.

Dionne Arrowsmith and Kathy Merriman: Massive campaign

If Mr Gurr's property is the frontline, the Arncott village shop is the field headquarters for Bicester Action Group.

Shopkeeper Kathy Merriman used to display a picture of a rural area divided by razor wire.

"We would get hundreds of signatures a day," she says.

"I think people feared their homes turning into something like Sangatte.

"No one has an argument with genuine asylum seekers. But what they fear is, quite literally, train loads of young men."

But why do they fear these men? Is this just dressed-up racism?

This concern was echoed in a major study of local reaction to asylum by King's College London. It found a lack of information on the centre and asylum seekers in Bicester exacerbated misunderstandings and fuelled suspicions.

And, as many villagers agreed, it's in that vacuum that tensions grow. Almost all the villagers spoken to raised fears of crime or vagrancy. A few linked asylum seekers to terrorism.

"Bloodbath, that's what will happen," says one irate local father. "I have a cricket bat. I will use it to protect my teenage daughter - I will protect her and go to prison for it if I have to."

Government in the spotlight

Bicester Refugee Support has worked to shift the focus from suspicions on to the government's motives.

LOCAL ANGER It feels to us like the Home Office decided all along that they were going to have this centre, public inquiry or not Michael Gurr

The campaigners present themselves as the "positive" voice and believe they have eased anxieties, with far-right political activity declining.

"This centre is clearly wrong. But at the initial stages the needs of the asylum seekers were not being advocated at all," says Colin Thompson of the organisation.

"The Home Office has to bear a lot of the responsibility for the unpleasantness which has occurred here.

"There are a lot of unknowns over this project. And fear of what's going to happen, without knowing what is going to happen, is quite a negative thing."

Back in Arncott, Dionne Arrowsmith of the Bicester Action Group says a racist element has been dealt with.

We want to engage constructively with local people and will step this up once the legal process has been completed Home Office spokesman

"This is about the infrastructure being imposed against the will of both residents and the asylum seekers themselves," she says.

"What's now become more important is that two years down the road people are very frustrated at what was supposedly a democratic process."

This anger towards government is coupled with anxieties about local services. So where residents see a proposed minibus for asylum seekers, they see no public service for them on weekends. Where centre residents will have a dedicated health facility, Bicester people say they are waiting for a community hospital.

For its part, the Home Office says the centre is designed to take pressure away from standard public services. While the former minister Beverley Hughes has visited Bicester twice, officials concede greater communication has been limited by legal battles.

Crucially, it stresses that the Bicester trial is not the end of the story; other centres are expected to go up elsewhere in the future - but their size and shape depends on asylum numbers and the success or failure of Bicester itself.

"We recognise that there is some local opposition and that there is a need to improve communication with the local community," said a spokesman.

On his farm, Michael Gurr remains unimpressed.

"It feels to us like the Home Office decided all along that they were going to have this centre, public inquiry or not," he says.

"I live right next door to this place but had no information from them prior to what came out in the press. I haven't had a minister coming to talk to me.

"They have only managed to create racial hatred and tension by how they have gone about this."