PEOPLE protesting against a scheme to build 300 homes beside Quakers Walk in Devizes will have to carry their fight to a public inquiry after Kennet District councillors voted to include it in the new Local Plan.

A meeting on Thursday voted to turn down a proposal by Coun Jim Thorpe, seconded by Coun Dick Breach, to remove the Quakers Walk allocation in the local plan and replace it with a similar scheme in Horton Road, where Berkeley Strategic Land Ltd wants to build a housing estate.

Coun Thorpe told the meeting the Quakers Walk plan was a late-included item and had lacked consultation with the local community.

He said: "I roundly support the objections which point quite significantly to no development taking place on Quakers Walk.

"I wholeheartedly support the opinion of the objectors and I am looking for the removal of that proposal from the local plan and its replacement with the development at Horton Road."

Coun John Booth recognised there was general dislike for the development but said: "We picked the site because of guidelines that came to down to us. We were told that if we didn't pick this site, it would be picked for us."

Sub-committee chairman Coun John Cooke said it was better to include the Quakers Walk site in the plan and let an inspector make a decision about it at the public inquiry which the replacement plan must legally go through.

Coun Thorpe disagreed. "It isbetter for a potential developer to have to prove his case than for all thesejustified objections to be kicked into touch," he said.

But his motion was defeated and the recommendation for no change to the draft replacement local plan was approved.

Despite more than 1,300 objections to the replacement local plan being received, very few changes were made to it on Thursday November 2.

A plea from the Police Authority to remove land at police headquarters in London Road from the Quakers Walk allocation was passed, meaning the 300 homes and school must be accommodated on land four-fifths the size. A landscape buffer must also be provided between Quakers Walk footpath and the proposed development.