DEVELOPERS could be free to build almost 165,000 houses in areas where local people do not want them because of proposed changes to planning rules, the Local Government Association has warned.

Changes to the national policy planning framework (NPPF) would allow developers in Blackburn with Darwen to ignore local plans for housing if they build fewer than 75 per cent of homes required by 2020 under new Whitehall targets, the association said.

In November 2015, government inspectors approved the borough’s controversial blueprint to build 9,500 new residential properties over 15 years including 4,000 executive-style homes on greenfield sites covering 1,200 acres of countryside on the outskirts of Blackburn and Darwen.

It said its own analysis showed more than half of the target - just under 165,000 homes in 42 per cent of council areas - could bypass the plans agreed by local councils by the end of the decade.

The local authority umbrella organisation warned this could allow developers to sidestep rules about infrastructure, housing quality and affordable housing.

It called for councils to be given more powers instead, allowing them to grant planning permission for approved sites more quickly.

Martin Tett, the LGA’s housing spokesman, said: “The planning system is not a barrier to house-building - the opposite is true. Councils are approving nine in 10 applications and last year worked with developers to approve 350,000 new homes, the highest in more than a decade.

“It is completely unfair to impose targets on communities which can only be met by private developers, and then to penalise those local communities if those builders do not deliver. This risks leading to a house-building free-for-all which will bypass the needs of local communities and could damage trust in the planning system.

“The Government needs to scrap these plans to avoid this alarming scenario playing out across the country.”

The Government is consulting on planned changes to the NPPF. A spokesman said: “Our proposed planning rules will ensure that we get the homes we need built in the right places and hold councils to account.

“Councils are responsible for setting out where to build the homes that are needed and we expect them to work with communities to achieve this.”