The senior councillor in charge of planning in Dorset has defended the decision to go beyond the Government minimum 'housing need' figure.

Councillor David Walsh says that working towards having land for 39,000 homes in the local plan, rather than the minimum of 30,500 over the next 17 years, is a safer position for Dorset to be in.

He says that in the past large parts of the county only aimed to provide the minimum Government target figures – and after only a short period the numbers slipped, leaving large parts of the county open to developers.

Cllr David Walsh says that with less than the Government's housing land supply of five years developers are more difficult to resist in areas where local people may not want them to build – because all they do is appeal council decision and with less than the minimum supply figures planning inspectors are likely to side with their development ambitions.

He says that Dorset needs the additional numbers in the revised local plan because it is likely to have to take a share of the unmet demand from Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and the New Forest. It may also find that some of the schemes being proposed are not able to proceed, also affecting the supply figure, or that the Government's methods of calculating the housing need for Dorset change.

Cllr Walsh told a Cabinet meeting that, so far, none of the county's neighbours had come up with a figure for homes they would like Dorset to take, but it was inevitable that they would.

In a formal response to a question about the figures from the Dorset Campaign to Protect Rural England group Cllr Walsh said: "While the consultation document sets out a target of 30,481, this is not necessarily the final target figure and we do not currently know what that will be.

"The figure of 39,285 is the sum of the housing supply set out in the consultation document. The housing supply and the housing target are two quite different things and it is not being suggested that the target should be 39,285…

"If we are only just providing enough to meet our targets, then we can very quickly lose the five-year land supply, thereby losing our local control over development."