AN inquiry into Test Valley Borough Council's planning policies for the future has been told by developers that the council should have allowed for 800 new homes at Abbotswood on the northern edge of Romsey.

The council has earmarked the land for 500 houses, which the Abbotswood Consortium - Bellway Homes, the Perbury Group and George Wimpey - intends to build.

But the continuing public inquiry at Andover into the Test Valley Borough Local Plan was told this week that the council should be going for a bigger allocation, which would take the total population of the new development up to around 1,900 people in an area of 52.3 hectares.

Speaking on behalf of the consortium, planning consultant Dale Vaughan Evans said: "The consortium propose approximately 800 dwellings - approximately 1,888 to 1,920 people at an average density of 43 to 48 dwellings per hectare....

"The council propose approximately 500 dwellings on a larger development area at an average density area of only approximately 26 dwellings per hectare.

"It is considered that the lower number of dwellings and the resultant density does not make best use of the land as required and limits the amount and level of local facilities that can be provided or facilitated, such as open space or affordable housing, and potentially frustrates a comprehensive development of the whole site owned."

Evidence presented by objectors to the Abbotswood development in the earlier stages of the inquiry had suggested that a large number of new houses would pose a major threat to an important colony of great crested newts.

But both Mr Evans and the consortium's ecological expert Dr Matthew Clarke contended that the newts could be accommodated with the minimum of impact.

Dr Clarke, who holds an English Nature Great Crested Newt Survey Licence, agreed that the presence of the breeding pond of a large population of great crested newts was "the most important and indeed the only significant potential ecological issue raised by development on the Abbotswood site."

But he said suggestions that the proposals would have an adverse impact on the newts was "wholly erroneous". Plans for the larger number of houses were described by Councillor Bruce Cowan as "a little bit over the top, but not a million miles out."

Pointing out that Abbotswood was a reserve site and unlikely to be developed before 2011, he recalled: "They originally put in for 750, but councillors and the public at large who attended the public meetings on the subject decided to go for the more cautious total because we seemed to be hitting our targets in terms of the South-East England regional development requirements."

He added that he knew there were arguments that more than 500 houses could be built on the site without causing demonstrable harm and he said he accepted there was some soundness in that argument.