GOVERNMENT housing policies were creating massive problems for rural communities, West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger said this week.

Mr Liddell-Grainger said new estates were being thrown up with no regard to their impact on local services.

And as a result people in rural towns and villages were finding it more and more difficult to access medical and dental treatment while the influx of additional pupils was exerting enormous pressure on schools.

Mr Liddell-Grainger said the Government needed to 'call a halt to the virtually uncontrolled sprawl’ of new homes across the countryside and instead offer housebuilders extra incentives to offset the higher cost of developing brownfield sites.

He said more than 230 homes were now scheduled to be built on farmland just south of Watchet, the third major development within the local area in the space of a few years.

Mr Liddell-Grainger said: “Interestingly enough, the application was supported by the claim that this was low grade farmland, yet when the tenant’s rent was being fixed it was based on it being either grade one or grade two.

“It is all very well for rich absentee landowners to flog off farms to disappear under housing estates but the impact on the local communities can be catastrophic.

“In the Watchet area the health and dental services are already hopelessly overstretched and people have the devil of a job trying to get seen.

“Yet, a massive estate can simply be plonked down with no provision whatsoever to provide additional social resources.

“The health centres, the dentists, and the schools are just expected to cope with the extra numbers as best they can.

“Quite apart from the fact that we cannot afford to lose any more farmland when we are already relying on imports for nearly 50 per cent of our food, this dumping of new estates in the countryside is wrecking the social structure of towns and villages and making life even more difficult for those already living there.”