NOT enough information is available to the public on major plans for housing and employment in York over the next 15 years, according to Lib Dem councillors.

City of York Council had been due to start a public consultation on new sites added to its Local Plan, but the process faces fresh scrutiny after opposition councillors said crucial information like infrastructure plans and the exact number of houses to be built on individual patches of land had been left out of public documents.

Cllr Ann Reid, the Liberal Democrat’s spokesperson for planning, said: “It would be inappropriate for public consultation to begin until residents are given the full facts.

“It is very difficult for residents to know the scale of housing and development that is planned for specific locations.

“Clearly, whether the plan is to build 20 or 2,000 houses on a site is going to make a substantial difference to what people think about it.”

Cllr Reid and her colleagues Nigel Ayre and Carol Runciman are calling for housing numbers and infrastructure plans to be included in the public papers before the consultations begin, and the issue will now be looked at again at a cross party scrutiny committee on Monday, May 12.

Cllr Dave Merrett, the cabinet member for planning, defended the council’s actions saying only it needed “in-principle” views on the new sites at this stage, before another, more comprehensive, consultation later in the process.

He said: “This extra consultation is taking place is on completely new sites plus previously proposed sites where there are altered boundaries since the original draft local plan consultation.”

“We will then be looking at comments on these revised sites.”