A PLANNING free-for-all in Chelmsford would result if the North Chelmsford Area Action Plan was withdrawn.

The authority’s full council meeting on Wednesday last week agreed, after a two-and-a-half hour debate, that the document, which lays out plans for housing, infrastructure, employment, a new railway station and new schools to the north of the town, should go to a government inspector for public examination.

Two sites in the plan, land north of Copperfield Road and land east of Patching Hall Lane, which would provide 400 of the 4,000 houses allocated for north Chelmsford have been controversial and there had been strong opposition to them At the meeting, representatives of Newlands Spring Residents’ Association and Chignal Estate Residents’ Association once again voiced their opposition to the plan. A motion by Tom Smith-Hughes (Lib Dem, Patching Hall Lane) for the two sites to be removed before it was sent to the inspector was defeated.

The council’s interim legal officer Meic Sullavan-Gould told the meeeting that to remove the sites would be a major departure from the plan and it could not go forward.

He said: “It would put the Local Development Framework back to the start.”

Neil Gulliver, cabinet member for planning and building control, said if the plan was withdrawn, the 40,000 sites that had been put forward by developers could be submitted again for planning approval.

He said: “The decision is very stark and clear. If we accept what we have, we retain the ability to look at it again. If not, we would have a planning free-for-all.

“That is not scaremongering, it is a fact.”

The council was told it would have to wait to hear from the new coalition government about the scrapping of housing targets. It has always been argued by the Tory administration that the 14,000 houses the council has to provide up to 2021 was forced on it by the Labour government.

Those targets across the country are expected to be abandoned by the new government and local authorities allowed to chose to build for their own needs.

But the meeting heard this was a statement of intent, and would need legislation for it to be changed.

The council also agreed it would keep under review any changes in Government policy and review any documents and seek formal withdrawal of NCAAP from the independent examination planned for later this year.