FRESH question marks are hanging over York’s Local Plan after experts calculated that the number of households in the city will grow much more slowly than previously thought.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revised down a previous projection for future household growth in York from 884 per annum to just 442.

The ONS said such changes reflected lower population projections, notably assumptions around future births, how long people will live and migration, and more up-to-date figures about living arrangements, such as living with parents or cohabiting.

It stressed the projections were a starting point for calculating future household needs and not a prediction of how many houses should be built in the future.

But Independent councillor Mark Warters has claimed City of York Council should 'embrace the implications' of the projections, seize the opportunity to reduce development pressure and incorporate them into York's Local Plan, 'which will undoubtedly lead to significant changes to the number and size of allocated housing sites.'

However Labour's Local Plan working group member, Neil Barnes, claimed the projections were 'irrelevant to York’s very serious problem today of a high housing cost-low pay economy, which is creating an increasingly unequal city.'

He said an objective assessment of housing need should be made, avoiding 'the headlong rush to push annual targets down to rock bottom, as this will only make York even more unaffordable for the younger generation, for essential key workers and those working in York’s low pay economy.'

Cllr Nigel Ayre, the working group's LibDem chair, said the projections supported the authority's Local Plan targets for building new homes, which critics have claimed are not high enough and might be rejected by planning inspectors.

He said: “To insist that York builds more homes than we have already proposed, particularly when taking into account the new evidence from the ONS, would clearly be unjustified." He added that if the plan were withdrawn at this stage, York would again risk Government intervention.

Party colleague Cllr Keith Aspden said the projections demonstrated the council was right to adopt its 'balanced approach' in drafting the Local Plan and reject a suggested uplift in its housing numbers.

Green leader Andy D'Agorne said the priority had to be adopting a plan, so that the council had valid local policy and identified sites, that could be modified in five years if necessary.

A council spokesman said: “We are liaising with the Government, in respect of the latest household projections, and its impact on the York Local Plan preparation. We expect to be responding to the Local Plan inspectors request for further information very shortly.”

An official, Rachel Macefield, also told Cllr Warters yesterday that the authority will be asking the inspectors to consider early hearing sessions on the housing need issue 'so the council and other interested parties can engage in early discussions on this central element of the plan.'

She added: "We consider that there would be merit in the housing requirement being addressed at an early stage in case this has wider implications for other policies in the Plan which would need to be addressed before any further hearings."