Campaigners opposed to controversial plans to stamp 111 new homes in Raglan took aim this week at news that Monmouthshire County Council had fudged the numbers.

After it emerged that MCC pushed through the plans based on incorrect figures, local campaigners insisted the county council abandon its decision to allow developers to build on a sprawling site in Raglan.

The application to build 111 homes on Raglan’s Monmouth Road, which councillors narrowly pushed through last November, was met with strong opposition, with campaigners claiming the village would grow by one-third.

A recent report found councillors had decided upon that application through fudged data, a mistake MCC planning chief, Mark Hand, admitted at a special council meeting on February 22.

Planning chiefs told councillors that it was 961 houses short of its target, when the correct figure was 504. That same report said the authority lagged 337 affordable home behind, but the correct figure was 38.

Campaigners from Raglan Village Action Group (RVAG) flagged up the contentious figures last November, forcing MCC planning chiefs into a February climbdown.

Speaking to the Chronicle, a spokesperson said they welcomed MCC’s ‘belated acceptance’ of figures the group issued to the county council months before they ‘finally persuaded’ the planning department to admit its error.

But the group continued its attack, claiming that MCC had failed to address the housing shortage despite ignoring its own guidance set-out in its Local Development Plan, calling it ‘wrong and unjustified’.

“MCC has stated that the new housing site allocations are the ’only way’ to address the housing shortage,” said a spokesperson, “but we suggest that council planners have failed to advise councillors on the obvious issue of speeding up delivery of the thousands of housing plots already identified in their development plan.

“Of special note is the fact that when the LDP was adopted in February 2014, MCC owned more than 700 of the 4,500 plots, and yet 5 years later, the Council has failed to deliver one house completion,” they said.

The group also hammered the council on its affordable-housing record, claiming that such ‘failure’ had forced MCC into disregarding its own local development plans.

“Monmouthshire County Council has failed to voluntarily increase the percentage of affordable housing on any of its own sites, including one for 45 houses in Raglan. These failures have caused them to unnecessarily allocate more and more land outside of its own current local development plan,” said a spokesperson.

“These failures have also led to rural  communities such as Raglan being asked to ’pick up the pieces’ with environmentally damaging new housing sites to help Monmouthshire Planning get out of a problem largely of its own making,” they added.

Councillors approved the application following a narrow vote back in November, despite hundreds of objections from locals who claimed the development would ‘transform Raglan village into a town overnight’.

Campaigners, who attended the council chamber, also held a series of protest marches attended by hundreds.

The public furore then led to the Welsh Government deciding to ‘call in’ the application and seize decision-making powers from Monmouthshire County Council.

A letter addressed to Mark Hand, head of planning at Monmouthshire council, said the application ‘appears to be contrary to national policy,’ stating that current travel provision was unsatisfactory.

"There is no discussion of alternative more sustainable and healthy forms of transport or travel and [the development] relies on a commuted sum in the S106 legal agreement to improve local bus services," it said.

Ministers can call-in an application if request is submitted by any person or organisation, or if an application is referred by the council, in ‘exceptional cases.’??On this issue, the Raglan Village Action Group urged the council to avoid a costly fight.

“We acknowledge that Welsh Government has ’called-in’ MCC’s questionable planning decision, but we hope that, if the planning committee reconsiders in the light of new information,” said a spokesperson, “then the huge public cost of a ‘call-in’ inquiry can be avoided.”