SIX tree houses will be built at a controversial holiday site near Micheldever after civic chiefs granted permission.

Forest Holidays will be adding six more units to their cabins at Blackwood after Winchester city councillors gave them the green light.

Each tree house would be an extra bedroom and would be connected to a host cabin via a rope bridge.

The cabin site, which sits between the A303, the M3, the A33 and Larkwhistle Farm Road is about owned and managed by the Forestry Commission.

It was the fourth application submitted by Forest Holidays to build in the beech woodland after two plans to build 130 cabins and then 90 were both rejected.

A third application of 60 cabins was approved by civic bosses and the holiday site opened earlier this month.

Micheldever parish councillor Peter Bradley feared that this was the “first signs of ‘mission creep’”.

“If the applicant needs these now it needed them before – and knew it. We are not talking about bedroom count here, we are talking about buildings.

“As we predicted earlier we can expect and now have the first signs of ‘mission creep’ which is a classic case of big business getting what it wants by devious means.

“Since the facilities today are clearly not sufficiently attractive to many potential customers the drip-drip approach to incremental growth will go on. At what stage does Winchester say enough is enough?”

Adrian Burn, planning consultant for Forest Holidays, said: “We’re asking for an additional six bedrooms to compensate for the 10 that we have lost [in a previous application].”

After concerns were raised about the height of the tree houses and the impact they would have on the environment Mr Burn added that the tree houses “would stand no higher than the original cabins”.

Mr Burn said that there had never been a commitment from Forest Holiday for a community minibus which Cllr Bradley had said the village had never received.

Nine councillors voted in favour of the recommendation to permit with only Cllr Frank Pearson voting against.