Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council has not given up on its fight to spare the borough excessive house-building.

The authority had raced to complete its Local Plan - a Government requirement - before a new method of calculating housing targets came into force.

It failed when the Planning Inspectorate threw back its first effort, saying it had not met one of the legal requirements when preparing the plan - the duty to liaise with neighbouring authorities over housing allocations.

Tonbridge said it had done so, but was unable to provide the minuted evidence required by the planning inspectors.

As a result, the authority has had to embark on the process all over again, but this time using the new formula to calculate housing need that has upped the borough's housing target from 696 new homes per year to 839 houses per year - the equivalent of an extra 2,574 homes over the plan's period.

But now the council leader, Cllr Matt Boughton (Con), has written to Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, asking him to reassess the borough's target.

Cllr Boughton said: "We need a target that is consistent with the infrastructure constraints and environmental concerns we share."

He said: "Without this change (in housing numbers) we will be unable to fulfil our desire to avoid development on Green Belt and greenfield sites, given our clear policy of prioritising brownfield development first.

"Tonbridge and Malling is a great place to live and we do need to balance the need for new homes for local people, keen to get on the housing ladder, with protection for our environment and improvements to infrastructure.

"These must come before development and it is essential the housing figures in Tonbridge and Malling are assessed again.”

The Planning Inspectorate has made it clear that its will reject any authority's Local Plan that does not meet its calculated housing target, and without a Local Plan, an authority becomes subject to "planning by appeal". That means that no matter how good the authority's reasons for refusing a planning application might be, any refusal is likely to be over-turned on appeal to the Planning Inspectorate - with the risk the council will also be ordered to pay the developer's costs.

Cllr Boughton said: "There is a window of opportunity for the Government to reassess the level of housing demanded in Tonbridge and Malling, and in light of the Levelling Up White Paper, that is exactly what I have asked him to do."

The Levelling-up Paper suggests there should be a move away from concentrating development in the South East towards re-balancing growth across the country.

Some 71% of Tonbridge and Malling borough falls with the Greenbelt, were development is supposedly prohibited.