The government has today revealed it will send its chief planner to Thanet in a step that could see it take control of the authority's future housebuilding plans.

Housing secretary Sajid Javid has written to the authority's leader Bob Bayford criticising the council's "persistent failure" to produce its local plan.

The documents are legally required to be produced by councils to earmark specific sites for housing allocation.

The government's chief planner will now directly assess whether it needs to take over the process of producing the local plan for Thanet District Council.

The council is one of just three out of 15 local authorities in England to receive this decision.

In a letter sent today, Mr Javid wrote: "I am writing today as a result of the council's persistent failure over many years and under different administrations, to get a local plan in place, following on from concerns I set out on November 16 2017 about the lack of progress that had been made in plan-making.

"We also made clear that decisions on intervention will be informed by the wider planning context in each area (specifically, the extent to which authorities are working cooperatively to put strategic plans in place, and the potential impact that not having a plan has on neighbourhood planning activity)."

Thanet council was given until January 31 to explain why it had yet to publish a plan, providing any exceptional circumstances on why the government should not intervene.

Mr Javid added: "I have considered carefully the council’s letter of January 31.

"In summary, in January 2018, the district council resolved to reject the recommendation of officers to publish the draft Local Plan and is therefore failing to meet its deadline for publication of a plan, in accordance with your published Local Development Scheme.

"The council has failed to meet milestones in published Local Development Schemes at least five times since 2004.

"The district council’s argument to justify this failure sets out two inter-related circumstances – the local debate over the future of Manston Airport and the need to undertake further work to identify alternative sites after the plan failed to proceed.

"I consider that these are not exceptional circumstances – other authorities have dealt with uncertainty about the future of large sites.

"At the current time this is an authority where intervention would have the greatest impact by accelerating Local Plan production."

A team of experts led by the chief planner will now feed advice back to Mr Javid before further talks are held with the council's officers.

Officials will also begin formal discussions about the possibility of inviting Kent County Council to prepare a Local Plan for Thanet, and with the neighbouring authorities on the possibility of directing a Joint Plan, as part of considering whether to use Mr Javid's statutory powers.

New council leader Bob Bayford (Con), who took the role after Cllr Chris Wells (Ukip) stepped down earlier this month, says the intervention can be seen in a positive light.

"We have stated that our priority is to produce a Local Plan at the earliest opportunity and, while it's not nice being on a shortlist, the fact we have the minister coming in to help us get there quickly can only be seen as a good thing," he said.

Asked if the Manston debacle had been the key issue in stalling the plan's publication, Cllr Bayford added: "It's played a part, of course, but Local Plans take a long time to produce and there have also been a number of administration changes which have contributed to that delay."

Housing secretary Sajid Javid added: “Whilst most councils rightly recognise their responsibilities and most have worked hard to meet the housing challenge, some have failed.

“I expect those authorities we identified in November to continue to make progress.

"I’m also stepping it up with three councils in particular, sending in a team of experts to make a direct assessment, ensuring they plan properly for the future or we’ll have to do it for them.”