Wiltshire Council’s plan for the next 15 years of development in the county’s towns and villages has been criticised in an open letter signed by 25 organisations.

Representatives from the groups, including civic trusts and parish councils, handed their objections to Cllr Toby Sturgis, the cabinet member for the environment, at County Hall as the consultation on the Core Strategy came to a close.

The plan sets out where the council would like to see future housing, commercial and industrial developments to meet the needs of a growing Wiltshire until 2026.

The protest, headed by George McDonic, a past president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, criticises the scale and location of development in the draft plan.

Building 37,000 homes in the county, with 20,000 in North and West Wiltshire over the next 15 years, would it says, lead to massive housing estates on green field sites, more characterless car-based suburbia, more traffic congestion and pollution, declining town centres, damage to the environment and loss of agricultural land.

Mr McDonic, who is a former planning inspector and chairman of the Wiltshire branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, said: “The council’s plan is not justified by evidence to support the extremely large allocations of housing and employment land. In economic and planning terms, it simply does not stack up.”

Patrick Kinnersly, secretary of the White Horse Alliance, said: “We have done this because we sensed mounting resistance in all parts of the county to a plan that would dump a sprawl of urban extensions and industrial estates into the open countryside of Wiltshire, especially along what the council sees as the A350 economic growth corridor through north and west Wiltshire from the M4 to the A36.”

Council officers are now assessing feedback from the consultation, which closed on Monday.

They will compile a report by the end of the year, when the Core Strategy will be released for a second round of consultation. Next year it will be sent to a Government inspector for approval.

The approved plan will be a guide to future investment and development.

Cllr Fleur de Rhe-Philipe, cabinet member for strategic planning, said: “We have actually reduced the proposed number of new homes in Wiltshire from the Govern-ment target of 44,400 to 37,000 over the 20-year period 2006 to 2026.

More than 8,300 of these have been built already and a further 8,870 are in the planning process.”

She said the number of homes in the document was based on people who would need housing by 2026.

One aim is for young and old people to be able to stay in their communities, while land was available for new and existing businesses and countryside was protected.