A leading countryside charity has criticised a local authority for adopting a massive housing programme despite last-ditch interventions from Kent County Council (KCC).

Maidstone council passed plans last month for more than 8,000 extra houses to stay in line with targets imposed by central government.

The decision sparked fury from all sides, not least the communities in the county town, Lidsing and Lenham Heath.

But CPRE, The Countryside Charity, said it had been left “deeply disheartened” by the council’s decision which represented a “significant setback”.

More than 5,000 houses are pencilled in for Lenham Heath, 2,000 on the border with Medway at Lidsing and 1,300 at Invicta Barracks in Maidstone.

A CPRE statement said: “This is a plan that significantly increases the level of house building within a borough that has already expanded vastly over recent years, with existing infrastructure already falling over as a result.”

It missed the opportunity to address “critical issues” over the sustainable development in the borough, said CPRE.

“KCC’s intervention highlighted the plan’s failure to provide adequately for crucial infrastructure elements such as roads and schools…”

The statement added: “We were particularly concerned as to the Heathlands (Lenham Heath) proposal to dump 5,000 houses on isolated countryside near Lenham, along with 2,000 houses to be built on countryside at Lidsing.

“Among the myriad of problems, it was apparent from the start that the plan failed to account for the necessary infrastructure required to support the envisaged housing developments, particularly at Heathlands and Lidsing.

“This obvious flaw remained unresolved throughout the Local Plan examination process, causing increasing exasperation from us and other key stakeholders as we sought to highlight this.

“Even on the night of the critical vote by the borough council to formally adopt the Local Plan, Kent County Council, responsible for much of the essential infrastructure, attempted to intervene by pleading with the council not to adopt it.

”KCC’s intervention highlighted the plan’s failure to provide adequately for crucial infrastructure elements such as roads and schools, emphasising a number of critical failings of the plan. These pleas, however, ultimately fell upon deaf ears.”

KCC claims the Invicta Barracks site is not suitable for schools and their buildings and cast doubt on the timeline.

Maidstone council leader Cllr David Burton (Con) said: “The CPRE will only be happy when you don’t build another house. The fact is there is a housing crisis that is becoming acute.”

He conceded the Lenham Heath development has still got a “long way to go” but the Invicta Barracks’ secondary school places would help meet future needs from nearby primary schools.

Cllr Burton said Maidstone would provide a first tranche of 1,000 affordable homes which would form part of the overall total the council would provide.

CPRE said: ”CPRE Kent firmly believes that if we are ever to address the housing needs of our communities, particularly in terms of providing social-rent housing, proper infrastructure planning is critical.

“The adoption of the Maidstone Local Plan represents a significant setback for the future of Maidstone residents…”

“Without proper infrastructure, any housing development will rightly be met with public resistance and ultimately fail to serve the needs of both existing and new residents.

“In this respect, the adoption of the Maidstone Local Plan represents a significant setback for the future of Maidstone residents.

“By sacrificing precious green spaces for car-dependent, cookie-cutter suburban sprawl, the council is perpetuating existing issues with the already-strained local infrastructure.

“(The Local Plan) serves as a case study of how not to produce a Local Plan, while simultaneously highlighting everything that is wrong with our spatial planning system in the process.”

Chairman of Lenham Parish Council, John Britt, who is a vocal critic of the Lenham Heath proposal, backed the CPRE.

He added: “What the CPRE says is absolutely true. We are now considering what legal routes we can go down and we are waiting to hear back about the potential for a legal challenge.”

Maidstone council has been ordered by the planning inspectorate to deliver a railway station, among other things, on the site to service the population at Lenham Heath.

Cllr Britt added: “Everybody has to remember that parish councillors are unpaid volunteers.

“We are not paid the sort of money that the Maidstone council officers who have crafted the Local Plan are paid or indeed the consultants they employed to help them.

“It’s David and Goliath but we know how that ended up.”