A LEADING councillor has raised concerns over the number of housing developments appearing across Wrexham.

Plaid Cymru Councillor Carrie Harper is a long standing campaigner against over development across the county, debating the actual need for new housing and fearing the strain they will have on local resources

A proposal for 600 houses near to Holt Road has recently been submitted to Wrexham Council as part of their emerging Local Development Plan, which the council submitted for examination by the Welsh Government in November.

She said: “Thanks to Labour Welsh Government policy, there has been a drive to turn Wrexham into Cheshire on the cheap for many years now and we are continuing to see our communities trying to defend themselves from housing applications like this one.

"Our town and its villages have been incrementally turned over to developers for dormitory commuter estates, regardless of that the damage that does to our local infrastructure, services and identity. It is a scandal that we’re being sold out in this manner and it’s happening as a result of a political agenda, it’s no accident and people are entitled to know where accountability sits.

“There is undoubtedly no need locally to build houses on the scale being proposed in this application or in the upcoming Local Development Plan generally, which sets out plans for thousands of new houses in Wrexham by 2028.

"Let’s be clear, the latest figures show that the local population is static, there is a need for affordable housing of the right type and in the right location but that is not what we’re getting.

"We’ve had over- development in Wrexham for many years now and we’re seeing the impact of that on key services such as the Maelor Hospital. These developments collectively will cause yet more problems for our town in terms of health, education, roads and other infrastructure. Add to this the savage cuts to other frontline services, such as policing and council budgets thanks to Tory austerity measures, also the loss of our green fields and it’s difficult to see this, along with all the other new development proposals being anything other than a disaster.

“It’s all based on a false claim that Wrexham’s population will rise by 20 per-cent by 2035. It’s a ludicrous over-estimate by the Labour Welsh Government based on previous high rates of growth in the 2000s linked to the expansion of Glyndwr, the EU accession states and housebuilding around Chester being limited. That was a unique combination of events. That’s not the case now, so there’s no need for these thousands of extra houses.”