GREEN belt in Basildon must be used for housing, the council chairman has admitted.

Tory Frank Tomlin has said the green belt's "sacred cow status” was becoming less tenable by the day.

The statement contrasts starkly with the council''s policy of planning all new building in town centres and not using green field sites.

Mr Tomlin made the remarks in a letter to the national magazine Total Politics and Tory council leader Malcolm Buckley has admitted the land may eventually be developed.

Mr Tomlin's letter said too much urban building was taking place, leading to more flats.

He wrote: “The result is that we are slowly, but surely, eroding the quality of life for town dwellers. That’s most of the population.

“We must seriously consider taking land out of the green belt for housing or face making life intolerable through overcrowding in the urban areas.

“The green belt's sacred cow status is becoming less tenable by the day."

The statement comes as the council undertakes a review of its green belt after hundreds of landowners put forward land as suitable for development as part of the call for sites process.

Mr Tomlin told the Echo: “We do our best to preserve the green belt, but as we get pressure from the Government to build more houses we have to ask where they are going to go?

“Over the next two or three years this issue will come to the fore.

“Beyond that we can’t go on having more houses and still keep within the boundaries of green belt because this will make life impossible.”

Mr Buckley denied the Tories were at odds with each other.

He said: “It is a personal opinion he is expressing.

“There will be no building on green belt in the foreseeable future. At the moment we are not building on green belt and our policy is for quality town centre developments, but who knows what the future holds?

“There will come a time when we have to release parts of the green belt. The house I live in was green belt, as was most of Wickford when I went to school.”

Allan Davies, Basildon Labour Group deputy leader, said the council should be looking to use brownfield sites.

He said: "For the chairman of the council to write to a national magazine and publicly state his opposition to the policies of the council’s Tory leadership, can only mean there is a big division on this issue.

“I think the public want to know if the green belt is safe in this district or not.”