A STRATFORD councillor is urging Stratford District Council to seek legal advice over three planning applications for a site in the town, which he believes have been submitted by developers attempting to avoid providing social housing.

Councillor Peter Moorse told the Journal last week he was concerned that housing companies could be deliberately submitting applications for 14 houses or below to avoid the threshold of 15 dwellings, which required developers to hand over a portion of land for social housing.

His fears grew this week when he discovered three companies had applied to build a total of 24 homes on the Coach House Hotel land on Warwick Road, but were building less than 15 each.

Coun Moorse investigated the firms and discovered that two shared the same directors and believes that, if the companies are linked, the separate applications should be treated as one and social housing should be demanded.

"Searches carried out at Companies House show that two applications are clearly connected, with common directors of the applying companies and the third development could not take place without the other two happening as well." said coun Moorse.

"I believe the council should treat this as one application, with a social housing requirement of at least 30% of the number of dwellings. I am asking the council to take urgent legal advice to establish how this can be done."