PARISH councillors have rejected an appeal by campaigners to reconsider their decision to support Taylor Wimpey’s application to build 48 homes on fields across from Lydiard Park.

At a tense meeting of the Lydiard Tregoze Parish Council on Tuesday evening, members of the Lydiard Heritage Action Group were left in no doubt that the council did not welcome their intervention, nor consider it worthy of any in-depth reconsideration.

Kevin Fisher, of the LHAG, was given five minutes to address councillors. He pointed out that of 601 responses to the housing plans, 99.5 per cent were opposed to them.

“You, Lydiard Tregoze parish councillors, stand alone in your support,” he said.

“Should Taylor Wimpey succeed with their application, you will be remembered as those that enabled the falling of the first and most significant domino, paving the way for the subsequent development of all the land west of Swindon up to and including Hook village.”

Mr Fisher and other members of his group asked the councillors to explain why, when all around them were opposed, they had opted to support the proposals.

But the councillors were in no mood to explain, chairman Peter Willis told the group he thought they were “very presumptive coming here tonight to talk us out of what we decided at our last meeting.”

He added: “We’ve looked at the plans, we’ve made our decision, and we’re sticking by them - we think that your attitude has been disgraceful.”

The parish council stands to gain a parcel of land off Tewkesbury Way and £10,000 for community projects, said to be an allotment and a cemetery, if the development goes ahead.

However they have claimed that their decision to support the development was not influenced by those promises from Taylor Wimpey.

Instead they say the land would offer a buffer between West Swindon and the villages beyond.

In recent weeks, parish councillors have articulated various reasons for their support of the proposals, including the idea that it would allow them to somehow meet their required allocation of housebuilding for the coming years.

However, at Tuesday's meeting, they accepted that this was likely not to be true - given that the provision of housing stock is measured on a county-wide basis and agreement at parish level, to this development, would not provide any guarantees on future developments.

Indeed, Coun Bob Lynch admitted that, within the next 20 years, it was highly likely that the whole area would be developed with Hook and surrounding villages being absorbed by new housing.

He appeared to suggest that such a reality should just be accepted as a foregone conclusion, however campaigners pleaded with him, for the sake of the heritage and the continued battle against development, not to resign himself to that inevitability.

The planning officer’s decision is expected next month and Coun Willis has promised that when it comes before Wiltshire Council's planning committee, the Parish Council's reasoning will be articulated in full.

For the campaigners who had hoped to achieve that level of clarity on Tuesday, they will now have to wait until next month, or perhaps even December, to get their questions answered.