YORK'S housing crisis is back in the spotlight after council bosses claimed they had finally made progress on a crucial long term plan for building in the city.

The Local Plan should set out where housebuilding and development is allowed across the city for 15 years, but York has been without one for decades.

The most recent incarnation of the plan has been mired in controversy and negotiations for years, and in autumn 2014 was thrown into chaos when councillors voted to go back to the drawing board the draft as it was.

Now the Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors who have controlled the city council since last May say they will soon be able to publish updated plans.

Cllrs Chris Steward and Keith Aspden, the Tory and Lib Dem bosses on the council, have made a joint statement saying: "Progressing York’s Local Plan is a key priority for the city and over the past few months the council has been working behind the scenes to ensure we can move things forward this summer."

They have also announced that a key committee, which has not met in eight months, will meet again next month to see reports on the progress and make recommendations to the council's ruling Executive. Once that is done, a public consultation will be launched on "Further Sites", and on changes to development sites already proposed.

The councillors added: "This is a significant next step towards progressing the Local Plan, with the reports enabling members of the public to see the work and background material which has been completed to-date ahead of the public consultation."

But despite the promise of progress, opposition Labour councillors have slammed the continuing delays and warned about the risks of missing a crucial Government deadline in spring 2017.

The party's planning spokesman Cllr David Levene said: "After nine months of no progress followed by three months of total silence, we're now told it will be almost two months more before meetings will be held to discuss the next stage of the Local Plan, but without any details. In private, coalition councillors have accepted this means that they will miss the Government's submission deadline of early 2017.

"The worst thing about this is it was entirely avoidable. Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have misled the public by opposing major sites like Whinthorpe and Cliftongate, only to finally accept after delaying for a year that they will be needed to be able to pass a credible Local Plan, something we said all along. It’s a shambles."

The longer York is without a Local Plan the more risk there is that developments will move in on greenbelt land, he added, and if the 2017 deadline is missed the Government could impose a plan on York taking away all local input on building and development.

New rules could also mean that councils which don't produce a Local Plan in time lose their "New Homes Bonus" - a significant chunk of funding that last year brought £4.65 million into City of York's coffers.

Officials have insisted that York will not miss the deadline, and will have a draft ready for a government planning inspector by spring next year,

Cllr Aspden, the council's deputy leader, added: "What's really important is that we are able to show progress to the government, so they do not have to intervene in York. Although they have set spring 2017 as a deadline they have not been specific as to when that actually is and all the advice from planning experts is that if we are consulting on the local plan this summer then we are making sufficient progress."

He said when they had taken office they were unhappy with previous Labour-led plans to build 16,000 homes on greenbelt land, and has asked officers working on the plans to prioritise brownfield and city centre sites, keep housing numbers down, and protect the greenbelt.