IT almost makes you feel sorry for the planners. Under pressure from John Prescott to build ever more homes, they have pushed ahead with their flagship York housing scheme despite vocal protests from residents.

Only to see all their hard work jeopardised - by newts.

Salute, if you will, another triumph for English planning law. Critical questions over the scale of a development, its impact on local families and the council's potential conflict of interest as both landowner and planning authority are not enough to automatically prompt an independent inquiry.

But find a pair of amphibians in the thicket and, screech! The brakes are slammed on the previously unstoppable development juggernaut.

Derwenthorpe is now on hold until naturalists can assess the discovery of rare great crested newts on the site.

That is right. So much of our wildlife is disappearing as greenfield sites are gobbled up for housing estates.

The ease with which residents found the newts certainly raises questions about the developers' natural impact surveys.

The irony is, Derwenthorpe is a genuine attempt to provide high specification homes in a quality environment. Brought forward by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as a 21st century New Earswick, the scheme envisages many affordable homes to buy and rent.

This is what York desperately needs. Whether this is the best place for quite so many homes - 540 - while other brownfield sites remain undeveloped is the point at issue.

To help ease the housing crisis, York, Harrogate and Leeds councils hope to share a Government windfall of £7.5 million. If this money is forthcoming, and these homes are to be built quickly and with the minimum of opposition, lessons should be learned from Derwenthorpe.

Planners should give priority to smaller developments on brownfield sites, well away from newt breeding grounds.

Updated: 10:17 Wednesday, May 26, 2004