AROUND 1,500 objections have been lodged against Stroud District Council's local plan - three times the number estimated by council officers two weeks ago.

And although planners hoped they would be able to make the responses available for public viewing this week (SNJ report, Wednesday, July 27), their team of three has only just finished sending out letters of acknowledgement.

In total, about 2,000 responses were received, with around one quarter supporting various aspects of the plan.

But around a third of the representations were objections to controversial last minute changes to the plan, which included Nailsworth, Stonehouse, Thrupp, Brimscombe and Woodchester in the Stroud urban area.

Another third were objections to plans to increase the number of dwellings from 25 to 50 on the site allocated for development in the village of Kingswood.

"We have literally just started reading them," said planning officer Mark Newcombe.

"There are only three of us so resources are a problem but we have gone through and made a note of numbers we have received and acknowledged them."

When the SNJ visited Ebley Mill two weeks ago we were told the plans would be ready to view by this week.

"At that stage, people were literally queuing up to hand them in so we had a pile of things we hadn't even looked at," said Mr Newcombe.

He said that some of the 2,000 respondents had written as many as 20 objections to the plan. The actual number of objectors may be more, as petitions are classed as one respondent.

Now, each response will have to be analysed and entered into a database.

Mr Newcombe was unable to put a date on when the planning department would complete the task, but said his team were aiming to present the information to cabinet in October.