RURAL communities in Herefordshire, including several in the Ledbury area, are being asked to decide where new housing estates should be built.

The call affects in particular rural communities that have not produced their own planning blueprint, a neighbourhood plan, to help direct development for the next two decades or so.

But communities with neighbourhood development plans (NDPs) in the pipeline can also make submissions this autumn.

Herefordshire Council has issued "a call for sites" and communities affected have until September 7 to make their submissions for a Rural Development Plan, which will be another planning blueprint for future years.

A council spokesman said: "Many parishes are currently drafting neighbourhood development plans; 105 NDPs are currently in production, including in Ledbury, which will allocate proportional growth within their areas.

"However the Rural Area Development Plan Document will include parishes that have not chosen to produce a NDP but have settlements listed within the Herefordshire Council's own planning blueprint, the Core Strategy."

The spokesman added: "As part of the evidence base for potential future housing allocations within the Rural Areas Development Plan, a ‘call for sites’ has been issued by the Herefordshire Council to update the existing Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment document, particularly for those areas where little information currently exists."

Rural areas to be looked at through the new plan will include Bringsty; Brockhampton; Coddington; Eastnor; Gorsley; Much Cowarne and Stoke Lacy, but it will be a county-wide assessment.

The news has been welcomed by Paul Barton of the property consultancy, Bruton Knowles, especially as a financial opportunity for landowners, but also to ease inflation and pressure in the housing market.

He said: "We have seen development land sales for large scale projects adjoining some of the region’s larger settlements achieving good prices.

"The Government has made it abundantly clear that the number of new homes being built is not sufficient to ease the simple supply and demand which is in turn keeping house prices high and out of reach for much of the population.”