EAST Herts District Council is being asked to accommodate an unfair proportion of planned south east housing, it has been claimed.

Mr Cedric Thomas, who lives in Bishop's Stortford and is a member of the Campaign Against Unsustainable Stortford Housing (CAUSE), said east Herts has been providing an average 17 per cent of Hertfordshire's new housing per year since 1981, when it should be providing only ten per cent.

He said: "There are ten other districts in this county. If we built only ten per cent of the housing needed and used brownfield sites we wouldn't need to build any new housing on other land until 2016."

He added that further airport-related housing would not be needed because employment at Stansted Airport had been "grossly overestimated" in the early 1980s.

Last December the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) determined that 3,280 new homes should be built in Hertfordshire.

The figure was only ten fewer than housing numbers previously mooted.

Mr Thomas said the minimal drop was unfair, considering the figure for Berkshire had dropped by more than 800 homes.

He added that towns like Bishop's Stortford could no longer sustain more housing, because people had moved to the area from Cambridge and London.

"It makes better sense to have more houses to the west, nearer the likely increase in need for affordable housing.

"House prices in Bishop's Stortford are well beyond the means of the average worker."

Mr Thomas said CAUSE would oppose the DETR draft figures, and he expected Hertfordshire Council to do the same.