PLAYING fields, allotments and open spaces are among the sites most at risk of development after consultants identified sites for more than 90,000 new homes.

Epping Forest District Council is drawing up guidelines that will shape development for years to come, and commissioned Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners to assess possible sites for a fee of £27,500.

They found enough space for nearly 2,400 new homes under current guidelines but, if the council was to adjust the green belt boundaries, space would be opened up for another 88,000.

Dave McKelvey, 49, of the Theydon Bois Action Group, said: “It flies in the face of a meeting we had with councillors where they told us the council would make every effort to protect the green belt around Theydon Bois.”

Elizabeth Fahy, 60, of Englands Lane, Loughton, where residents lost a battle against a golf driving range being built in the nearby green belt, said: “A lot of people will be objecting to it. It’s getting quite built up around here as it is.”

At a meeting to unveil its findings so far, the firm was criticised for producing a map of the sites that was so indistinct, many individual sites could not be identified.

But land most at risk of development includes:

- Land between the High Road and Nursery Road in Loughton.

- Land near Paternoster Nursery, just north of Waltham Abbey.

- Land near Home Farm, off Coopersale Street in Fiddlers Hamlet.

- A site near playing fields off Luxborough Lane, Chigwell.

The consultants claim to have identified another 19 sites – including playing fields, allotments, and amenity open spaces – which could be developed without affecting the green belt, along with areas north of Loughton and surrounding Epping, Theydon Bois, North Weald and Ongar which are in the green belt.

A spokesman for the council insisted that three separate public consultations would take place before any policy change and admitted it had not yet looked at the recommendations for individual sites.

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