DEVELOPERS have pressed for more houses to be built in Kennet than those already planned.

At the public inquiry into the replacement Kennet Local Plan last week, developers asked for an allowance to be built into plans to build houses in the area over the next ten years.

Representatives from Robert Hitchins Limited, Croudace Homes and AKC asked for an allowance of ten per cent more homes to be built into the housing allocations in the local plan.

In Devizes this would mean an extra 75 houses being built on top of the 755 planned.

Developers argued that the allowances would allow them to build extra properties if for some reason permission granted for the numbers of new houses scheduled in the local plan were not taken up.

The House Builders Federation asked for a 20 per cent allowance on brownfield sites. But Christine Carver, who represented Devizes and Marlborough Friends of the Earth, argued that windfall developments those that are not provided for in the local plan but are allowed by the district council always occur in any case.

John Kirkman, chairman of the Kennet group of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, told the Gazette that the developers' proposals should be resisted.

"This is an attempt to persuade the inspector at the local plan inquiry to approve the possible development of more housing than is in Kennet's plans already," he said.

"Kennet in general, and Devizes in particular, will have enough problems in assimilating the new houses already in the local plan, let alone ten per cent more."

Results of the public inquiry will not be known until January 2003.