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Herefordshire leaders have been warned not to accept far higher new housing numbers for the county as the price for government backing of the city bypass plan.

Recent government proposals would add more than 10,000 to the number of new homes to be built in Herefordshire over the next 20 years.

Independents for Herefordshire councillor and former council leader David Hitchiner said there was neither the building capacity nor the land supply in the county to meet such targets.

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“I remain concerned the current [Conservative-led] administration will accept a huge uplift in housing delivery targets as a tactic to secure government support for its preferred road project,” he told a full meeting of councillors.

The council’s cabinet member for Coun Elissa Swinglehurst hit back that the government’s proposals “all add up to immense pressure on the council, and we are pushing back against that”.

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In its 42-page response to the government’s plans, Herefordshire Council said that a mandatory increase of 43 per cent, from 16,100 new homes in the county to 27,500 over 20 years, “is too high, and the market is unlikely to deliver it”.

Expecting the county to build 1,375 new homes each year would be “a very significant increase on past trends and current proposals”, given the average figure over the past 10 years has been just 675 a year, it said.

Setting a target “so far removed from the current rate of growth” will “simply not deliver the growth central government wants, as the market for it may not be there”, the council warned.

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And referring to Herefordshire’s ongoing problem of high property prices relative to local incomes, the council added it was “questionable whether the age-old economic theory of ‘increasing supply’ will lead to a reduction in house prices”.

“Herefordshire has greater need for affordable than market housing, [and] increasing the total housing is not going to solve that issue,” it said.

Meanwhile bringing back the requirement for councils to be able to demonstrate a five-year housing land supply would increase the chances of unplanned, “speculative” development in the county, it warned.