By Julian Whittle Political editor

Last updated 11:37, Tuesday, 13 May 2008

MINISTERS are preparing the way for a major house-building programme in Cumbria by scrapping an upper limit on the number of new homes.

Growth: Previous plans to limit the number of houses built in Carlisle to 8,100 have been scrapped

The first draft of the North West Regional Spatial Strategy – a planning blueprint – set targets for the number of homes to be built by 2021.

It would have allowed up to 8,100 in Carlisle, on top of any replacements for existing properties demolished.

There would have 4,800 in Allerdale, 4,140 in Copeland, 4,300 in Eden and 2,100 in the Lake District national park.

Those maximums have been dropped from the strategy’s final draft, which is due to be published in July.

This will open the way for house-building on a bigger scale, as envisaged in the recently-published economic strategy for Carlisle.

This document argues that the district’s population, currently 100,000, could rise to 140,000 or even 150,000 by the middle of the century.

County councillors meeting in Barrow today were expected to welcome the change in the spatial strategy.

A report to the council’s cabinet says: “Government Office North West has helpfully removed the maximum limit on the overall housing provision in Cumbria, in line with the Government’s Green Paper that seeks to increase overall housing provision. It is recommended that the county council supports this revision as it would help deliver transformational economic change sought in the county.”

But councillors are likely to oppose other parts of the spatial strategy’s final draft, which is out to consultation.

In particular, they are worried that targets for the north west to generate 20 per cent of its electricity from “renewables” by 2020 will mean too many windfarms.

Cumbria already has 16 windfarms with a total of 92 turbines. Two more have been approved and two have gone to appeal against refusal.

Councillors want the policy wording to be changed so local authorities can throw out applications for windfarms that “have a significant adverse impact on landscape character or visual amenity”.

They also say a requirement that all housing developments have a density of at least 30 homes per hectare is too inflexible.

The strategy fails to name Carlisle, Workington, Whitehaven and Barrow as sites for “regionally significant economic development”.

And they are unhappy that regeneration priority status has been removed from west Cumbria and Barrow.

Another is concern is that parking policies for Carlisle, Barrow, Whitehaven and Workington might mean there are too few car-parking spaces in new shopping, business and leisure developments.

JWhittle@cngroup.co.uk