You will have to fight us for land
There should be no building on the greenbelt for at least a decade.
That's the message from county councillors who are fighting plans to build up to 15,000 homes on protected land.
Gloucestershire County Council's Cabinet is opposed to any development which may lead to Gloucester and Cheltenham merging.
However, the authority is facing pressure from the Government which is looking for somewhere to put 30,000 homes in the county over the next 21 years.
The council wants future housing to go on previously developed land - brownfield sites - rather than the untouched greenbelt.
But after 2016 that choice will rest with the South West Regional Assembly.
The Assembly has suggested 15,000 homes could be built on the greenbelt before 2026, an idea which was rejected by the county council's Cabinet as it drafted its recommendations to be sent to the Assembly.
"The Regional Assembly has got something wrong here," said Coun Jeremy Hilton, the county council's Cabinet member for community services.
"They look at a map of Gloucester and Cheltenham then they say 'let's put a lot of houses around here'.
But we've got an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to the east and the River Severn and the floodplains to the west so we don't have much space around us.
"Gloucester is already being developed too fast to the south. We don't want so see further development to the south because then it starts to become a suburb of Bristol rather than a suburb of Gloucester.
"We also need to make sure that our market towns such as Lydney and Stow-on-the-Wold are developing and would not lose their populations to other areas."
Dr John Cordwell, county council portfolio holder for strategic planning and transport, said: "Exercises have been run to squeeze the pips and see how many houses we could get in. They came back with 'not that many'."
Dr Cordwell said the area around Gloucester could take fewer houses than many other areas and there were concerns about whether the infrastructure could support such a large number of houses.
The county council will send its views to the Regional Assembly as its first official response to the its document, Shaping the Future of Cheltenham and Gloucester to 2026.
The main proposed sites are Innsworth, Staverton and Uckington. London-style congestion charging and eight new 1,000-space park and ride sites are proposed.
There would also be a new North West Relief Road for Cheltenham, flyovers at key junctions including the A40 Gloucester Northern Bypass and a new road parallel to the Golden Valley.
Gloucestershire Echo, 18th March 2005
