DEVIZES residents have expressed disappointment that officers of Kennet District Council are recommending their councillors retain a plan to build 230 homes on land beside Quakers Walk in the local district plan.

Officers in the council's planning department were asked to consider the situation after the council lost two planning appeals and approval was granted to build up to 150 homes on the former Kverneland site and up to 158 on the former allotment land at Spitalcroft.

In a report to next week's meeting of the council's planning policies executive committee, Ed White takes to task planning inspector Chris Frost, who heard the Kverneland appeal, for suggesting that Kennet might want to reconsider the inclusion of the Quakers Walk site, which is on "greenfield" agricultural land, in the local plan.

Mr White wrote: "He correctly points to the council's responsibility to monitor, manage and provide the supply of housing land.

"However, his decision takes that responsibility away from the council, rather than allowing the council to undertake this through the development plan process."

Mr White recommends that councillors make no changes to the local plan on the basis of the two decisions, not least because the Quakers Walk scheme, the subject of a development brief also being considered by councillors next Thursday, offers the option of a new primary school for the town.

Jenni Harrison, a Roundway parish councillor who lives close to where the new houses are likely to be built, said she was disappointed that the council was being recommended to go ahead with the development of Quakers Walk.

She said: "It is going to be a disaster in more ways than one. The additional traffic spilling out on to London Road is going to be appalling and no one at County Hall seems to understand that we have a problem there already.

"The developers promising a new school on the site is, of course, the carrot, but do we really need it? According to the most recent figures, there is still spare capacity at most of the town's primary schools."

Peter Potter of the Quakers Walk Protection Group said: "Our hopes were raised after the decisions at Kverneland and Spitalcroft that Kennet might remove Quakers Walk from the local plan."