OPPONENTS of the proposed Borough Local Plan have been given an extra month to state their objections – after angry claims that the council had failed to keep people properly informed.

Royal Borough council leader Simon Dudley put out a statement on Wednesday saying that the deadline had been extended to September 27 from the original date of August 25.

He acknowledged that some residents felt it had not been adequately explained to them how to respond and said officers had been asked to take steps to ensure legal requirements were complied with.

His statement came on the same day as Oakley Green and Fifield Residents Association held another meeting to discuss the campaign against the council’s plan to earmark Oakley Green’s two garden centres and the open fields between them for potential development. Residents are bitterly opposed as the fields are Green Belt and seen as prized ‘green lung’ between Windsor and Maidenhead.

This week’s meeting was calmer than the earlier one, as councillors had not been invited.

But the residents association’s new chairman Martin Hall warned that the community must keep up the pressure, supporting the association’s small committee and being prepared to contribute financially to the campaign.

Association secretary Pat Morrish said: “It is natural that people are starting to get fed up with this, but we must stick together or we are lost.”

The Royal Borough has been ordered by the government to come up with a plan for more than 14,000 new homes over the next 15 years.

Earmarking the controversial section of land proposed for potential development in the local plan would indicate to developers that it was worth putting in planning applications for housing developments – although each scheme would still have to be considered individually.