Two new developments in High Wycombe comprising 410 homes have been approved by Buckinghamshire Council’s strategic sites committee.

One is an estate of 370 houses planned by Persimmon and Redrow on fields north of the A404 Amersham Road in between Terriers Farm and Hazlemere Recreation Ground.

The other is a 40-home site on a smaller adjacent field off De Havilland Court, which is being delivered by Find Estates.

Councillors approved the first application by six votes to four at a meeting on Thursday evening, while the second passed unanimously.

The committee backed both plans despite nearly 200 objections from residents concerned about the new estates resulting in a ‘lack of separation’ between High Wycombe and Hazlemere.

“Approving this application would create a continuous urban sprawl from High Wycombe all the way through Hazlemere and on into Holmer Green,” Hazlemere parish councillor Leigh Casey told the meeting as he urged councillors to refuse the 370-home site.

He added: “Hazlemere Parish Council would view this as a further betrayal of our residents and the end of Hazlemere as a semi-rural village.”

Cllr Casey told the committee it must consider the cumulative impact of development in the wider area, referring to the 259 new homes being built further up Amersham Road by Bellway.

Bucks councillor Ed Gemmell also told the meeting the 370-home site should be refused because it did not have a carbon emissions assessment, which he said contravened the ‘local plan’, the meaty document governing how and where development takes place.

He also criticised the ‘lack of separation’, a claim which was disputed by committee member, Cllr Richard Newcombe, who voted to approve the application.

Cllr Newcombe suggested that a small section of the proposed housing near the recreation ground was not sufficient to support the claims of a ‘lack of separation’, one of the principal reasons cited by those opposing the plans.

He said: “If I was in the recreation ground would I realistically think that that relatively small amount of housing built there showed effectively a continuation of Hazlemere into High Wycombe?”

Cllr Gemmell replied that ‘in reality’ there would be a lack of separation and told the meeting it would be ‘sensible’ to maintain a large recreation area as an ‘enormous buffer’ between different pockets of development.

Another criticism of the 370-home scheme was put forward by Cllr Tony Green who warned that the access of the site via Kingshill Road would ‘destroy’ historic hedgerow.

He told the meeting: “That will be appalling as far as CO2 collection is concerned. Hedgerow is shown to be more efficient than trees at that. To destroy historic hedgerows is, I think, appalling.”

But Persimmon and Redrow’s planning consultant Steve Brown told the meeting the 370 ‘energy efficient’ homes and sports pitches proposed by the applicants were the result of a ‘10-year dialogue’ with planning officers and statutory consultees.

The expert said his clients were ‘immensely proud’ of their work on the plans, which were ‘exactly’ the type of plan-led development encouraged by planning legislation.

He also told the meeting that none of the statutory consultees had raised technical objections to the plans over roads, including highway safety, drainage or ecology, and that the project delivered ‘much-needed’ new homes, 178 of which are to be affordable.