The new Local Plan has caused huge controversy, with the council’s draft plan for the next 20 years laying out a huge housebuilding drive across the district.

As reported in the BFP, residents’ action groups have sprung up across Wycombe and beyond with the aim of fighting the plans.

Here, planning cabinet member at Wycombe District Council Cllr David Johncock lays out his and the council’s case, as he prepares people to “face facts”.

He writes: “One thing I’ve learned over the years as a local councillor is that you can please some of the people some of the time but you can’t please all the people all the time. That’s certainly true of ‘planning’ and especially true about our new local plan.

“Lots of people used our consultation which closed last week to give us their views. We met over a thousand people at the face-to-face drop-in events we held in July and we’ve had over 3,000 detailed written responses.

“I went to all the local plan drop-in events and so I’ve heard the message loud and clear. While most people do understand and accept that there is a local shortage of homes, they don’t want to see more houses being built near where they live.

“But the simple truth is there are no easy answers and there is no silver bullet. We have to face up to the fact that we have a serious local shortfall of 15,000 homes which we have to meet by 2033. I say local, because most of these homes are for our local needs: we are living longer, and our children need homes.

“We have limited options open to us. Over 70 per cent of the district is in the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and almost half of the district is designated as green belt. The good news is we can use brownfield sites for about 5,000 homes, which helps to protect our countryside. We have released our ‘reserve sites’ and we could release a small fraction (one per cent) of our green belt for housing. We are also asking Princes Risborough to roughly double in size.

“15,000 new homes is a lot but, over the district boundary, Aylesbury Vale are looking at about double that number. In fact, to help us to protect our countryside we’re asking them to take up to a third (5,000) of our housing. However, unless we can prove that we’ve explored and exhausted every single option in our own district first, why should they help us?

“The fact is that a council with no local plan is almost powerless to fight developers. We need a robust local plan to protect ourselves from inappropriate development and we need roads and schools to go with new houses – the local plan can help us to get them. and will help protect the vast majority of our beautiful countryside.

“The bottom line is we need to face the future and give our children and grandchildren somewhere to live and so some difficult decisions will have to be taken.”