Concerns developers are "nibbling away" at the green belt across the south east have been raised as councillors said they would refuse an 80-home application in Shepperton.

An application for the Bugle Nurseries site, in Upper Halliford Road, had been appealed by the developer and will be decided by a government inspector after hearings due to take place in November.

Councillors on Spelthorne Borough Council's planning committee had to say what their decision would have been, and agreed with the authority's officers' recommendation to refuse the plans.

Their debate and decision, including 13 voting to refuse the application and two abstentions, at a meeting on Wednesday (23 August), will be submitted to the appeal hearing on behalf of the council.

The site's location in the green belt was one reason for refusal of the plans, with officers saying the plans did not show the "very special circumstances" needed to allow development, and would lead to it having a "more urban character" as well as there not being enough smaller homes in the plans.

The outline application, submitted by Angle Property (RLP Shepperton) LLP, also included newly-landscaped public space and a new play area on the site which sits alongside a railway line, a fishing lake and part of which is currently an industrial estate.

Further to the west of the site are the M3 motorway and the Shepperton tip.

Plans were for 18 one-bed maisonettes, six two-bed maisonettes, 11 two-bed houses, 34 three-bed houses and 11 four-bed houses.

Spelthorne councillors agreed to pause the local plan hearings process in June, but the draft document included an allocation of up to 79 homes on part of the Bugle Nurseries site.

Officers told the meeting the outline application would extend a little further into the site than the allocation in the local plan, which in any case could not be given too much consideration in the debating application.

With an application for 31 homes already granted permission on appeal on a smaller part of the site in 2021, one councillor said Spelthorne was effectively being asked to "give up a bigger chunk" of green belt, which could only be decided once the draft local plan was adopted.

Cllr Malcolm Beecher (Green Party, Staines) told the meeting: "My understanding is that developers across the south east are nibbling away at chunks of green belt, and here is an example where the developer has already been given permission by the planning inspectorate for development, which is in green belt."

Another councillor raised concerns that granting the application would "reward" creating concreted over areas of the green belt and then turning them into housing.

Cllr Matthew Lee (Conservative, Sunbury East) said: "This obviously was originally green belt, which has evolved into industrial area over the last 20-30 years."

He said when he was a child the land was "100% green belt" before a bungalow on the site was built and other areas followed, and asked if these applications were permitted "or it just evolved"?

Paul Thomson, team leader, planning development management, said though it was originally nurseries, the site had evolved to an industrial use, without planning permission.

He added: "But because they've been there so long, we don't really have any control over them now."

Councillors also refused an application put forward by the borough council for a development of 17 homes on vacant land next to the White House hostel in Kingston Road.

The appeal on the Bugle Nurseries site is due to start on November 28.