A LEADING councillor has said ‘I told you so’ at the news that up to 1,600 new houses could be built on the back of a new free school.

A new outline planning application has been submitted to Stockton Borough Council for a further 675 homes at Low Lane, High Leven, between Yarm and Ingleby Barwick.

Plans for 350 dwellings have already been approved to be built by what will be a 600-place free school and 150-place sixth form.

Since then developers have already indicated they wish to build a further 500 houses and now the latest plan for another 675 would put the overall figure at 1,575 new homes.

In recent months campaigners across south Stockton have joined forces to form Save Stockton South to protest against what they regard as too many applications to build too many homes across the district, including more than 800 at Allens West, Eaglescliffe.

Councillor Ross Patterson, an Ingleby Barwick Independent, explained he and other members of the political group had always wanted a new school, but said they had warned that this plan could lead to an explosion in new housing.

He said: “We said this a year ago. This is about planning law and officers told me a long time ago that if this paln at the go-ahead it would open up the rest of the site for housing development.

"We’re going to get a new school but that level of housing will have about 400 secondary school age children.”

However Stephen Fryer, of the Ingleby Manor Foundation School Trust, said that the free school could not be blamed for the housing.

He said: “We’re not told anything about housing from the developers, it is nothing to do with us. But I will say, that if the council had accepted the original plan back in February, they might have got away with just the 350 houses.

"Because they rejected it they had a public inquiry, which the council lost, in which it was clearly indicated that the new housing would have to be approved whether there is a new school or not because the authority doesn’t have an adequate five year housing supply. That was the green light the developer needed.”

Save Stockton South will have a motion about what they say is the council planning committee’s failure to reject housing development applications discussed at Full Council on Wednesday, December 11.