The Labour government’s planning overhaul and housebuilding targets are ‘cataclysmic’ for Buckinghamshire, the head of the region’s Conservative-controlled local authority has said.

Plans published on July 30 show that 4,122 homes are expected to be built in the Buckinghamshire Council area each year. The government’s new target for the county is a marked increase of 42 per cent from the previous aim of 2,912 new homes per year.

Buckinghamshire’s portion of new homes is part of the 370,000 homes the new government wants to build annually, instead of the current 305,000.

Announcing the news last week, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said the more ambitious homebuilding targets and planning reforms would ‘set us on our way to tackling the housing crisis’.

However, Bucks Council leader Martin Tett has hit out at the government’s new targets. He told the Bucks Free Press: “Released just as many go on holiday it is no exaggeration to say that the changes to the planning system are cataclysmic for Buckinghamshire.”

The council boss said everyone understood the need for more new homes due to the country’s growing population, while pointing out that there was already ‘massive house building’ taking place in the north of the county around Aylesbury and Buckingham.

He continued: “As we prepare our new Local Plan our policy has been ‘brown field first’, including reuse of redundant council office sites.

“With a third of the county Green Belt and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty we have also argued that mathematical targets need to be modified to take this into account.

“The new proposals sweep all of that away. We now have non-negotiable mandatory ‘top-down targets’.”

Rayner made clear that the government was also looking closely at areas such as Buckinghamshire – 32 per cent of which is covered by Green Belt.

Tett and other council leaders who oversee large Green Belt areas are worried by the government’s plans to reclassify some poor-quality areas of Green Belt as so-called ‘Grey Belt’. The term Grey Belt has not been fully defined, but the government said it ‘includes land on the edge of existing settlements or roads, as well as old petrol stations and car parks’.

Tett said: “To accommodate all this new housing, we will be forced to rush through a new Local Plan. This must review the Bucks Green Belt for ‘Grey Belt’, a completely meaningless term created by Labour.

“It is important to remember that the Green Belt is about openness, not being parkland. It is designed to prevent the merging of towns and villages and provide a lung for London.”

He added: “Importantly, this is not about nimbyism – it’s about protecting our communities and our environment from inappropriate sprawl and directing new growth to areas where growth can be properly planned with good well-funded infrastructure.”

Cllr Peter Strachan, the council’s cabinet member for planning and regeneration said the government’s proposals raised ‘complex and concerning issues’ for the authority.

He told the Free Press: “Just days after their publication, it is too early to know how they might affect Buckinghamshire, whether we may have been disproportionately affected and how we might wish to respond.

“We shall therefore be carefully considering the proposals over the next few weeks and shall submit a response on behalf of our communities before the consultation closes on September 24.”