Test Valley Borough Council’s housing plans have been thrown into disarray after the authority was forced to withdraw its controversial Core Strategy, which proposes more than 3,000 homes in the Romsey area.

The borough will now have to redraft the strategy – it includes proposals for 1,600 homes at Whitenap, 800 at Abbotswood and 400 at Hoe Lane, North Baddesley – which was due to have been the subject of Enquiry in Public (EiP) this summer.

“Unsound” was how government planning inspector, Ms Jill Kingaby, described Core Strategy at a public meeting in Andover last Friday.

Ms Kingaby delivered a nine-page commentary on the borough’s housing blueprint, criticising its layout, content, faulty research and lack of vision.

The inspector felt the borough had concentrated too closely on the fine details of housing developments, without giving enough thought to the wider implications of the schemes.

“I expected the Core Strategy to be more specific about the direction of development in the way in which requirements for housing, employment and town centres, transport etc, might be delivered,” she stated.

She also said the strategy document was too long.

The redrafted strategy will now have to go through a new public consultation process.

Council planning and transport portfolio holder, Martin Hatley, said: “We believe that we have taken all reasonable steps to follow the Government’s extensive advice to planning authorities on how to deliver new development.”

He added: “We have received wide-ranging feedback from the community and extensive independent advice, so I am both disappointed and puzzled that the inspector was not satisfied with the case we put forward. Despite this setback, I know that we will continue to work together effectively to resolve the queries that have been raised.”

Mark Cooper, councillor for Romsey’s Tadburn division, said redrafting would be a costly process and called for heads to roll.

“Council taxpayers have a right to expect that a Core Strategy should be written in accordance with current planning practice. The portfolio holder, Cllr Hatley, who has presided over this mess, mostly with his head firmly buried in the sand, should resign forthwith”, said Cllr Cooper.

Cllr Cooper had warned the council that the Government Office for the South of England (GOSE) had highlighted faults in the strategy.

“Even after I had circulated all councillors with the GOSE comments in January last, officers and the Cllr Martin Hatley denied that there was any problem and that the Core Strategy was ‘sound’,” said Cllr Cooper.

“They even went ahead and published a Local Development Strategy a month after GOSE had instructed Test Valley to redraft it. Such incompetence is breathtaking and there is going to be a very high financial cost to meet, because a lot of research needs to be done again – and properly this time – and the whole project completely redrafted, at a time when staff have not been replaced in order to meet savings targets.

“I warned them, again and again, that the Core Strategy was unsound. Test Valley’s response was a bemused silence.”

He said that the withdrawal of the core strategy cast doubt over the plans for the Abbotswood development which had already been given planning permission.

While the Core Strategy was being redrafted, the old Borough Local Plan would stay in force and Cllr Cooper warned that landowners and developers could try to exploit this “window” and put forward alternative large-scale housing schemes, which the borough would have a duty to consider.