BURY Council’s leader has described a Government minister’s refusal to meet him to discuss the future of green belt land in the town as “outrageous”.

A White Paper published by the Government in February stated that at least 250,000 new homes needed to be built across the UK every year in order to match demand, and said that councils and developers need to ‘get real’ to the scale of the challenge.

Current projections show that 12,500 houses will need to be built in Bury by 2035, but Councillor Rishi Shori says that brownfield sites in the town will only accommodate 7,000 at present, meaning that the remaining homes will have to be built on green belt land. He has since written to Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, last month to discuss the Government’s population and housing projections, and the impact they will have on the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework.

He says that the projections fail to take into account the potential impact of recent events, such as Brexit, on future numbers, something he wanted to discuss with Mr Javid.

However, Cllr Shori says his invitation to meet has been refused “due to diary pressures”, with Mr Javid also failing to offer any alternative chance for discussion.

Responding to the incident, Cllr Shori said: “This is an outrageous snub, especially when you consider that the Minister is up in Manchester soon for the Conservative Party Conference. It is clear that the Government has no plans to protect our greenbelt and is simply not interested in listening to our local concerns. Quite frankly, this is an insult to the taxpayers of Bury. As the council leader I am trying to do everything that I can to moderate these figures but I don’t think there’s much more I can do. If the figure was lower then we would not have to build on green belt land.”

A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government did not wish to comment.