27 homes are set to be built in a Somerset village after councillors made a U-turn and approved a development they had rejected just last month.

North Somerset Council’s planning committee voted to refuse planning permission for Woodstock Homes to build the homes on fields next to Churchill on 17 of July. As the decision went against the recommendation of the council’s planning officers, council rules required it come back before the committee to be ratified.

But, in a surprise move, instead of ratifying their previous decision, members of the planning committee instead voted 7-3 to grant planning permission for the homes to go ahead.

Vice chair of Churchill Parish Council David Johnson, who had addressed the committee to urge them to stand by their decision, said that the U-turn was “not at all” expected. He said: “I would have said between last meeting and this meeting there has been an apparent change of the ground rules.

“The debate in the July meeting was very much about sustainability. It was about the strategic gap and it was about the Mendip Hills which we would assert was the easiest grounds to dismiss.”

The homes, eight of which would be affordable, would be built on a field on the east side of Hillier’s Lane which would “infill” between the village and a group of homes on Dinghurst Road, with a smaller field next to the homes to become an orchard.

But the homes would be located in an area set to be demarcated as a “strategic gap” between Churchill and Sandford in North Somerset’s upcoming new local plan. Although not located within the Mendip Hills National Landscape, also formerly called an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), the homes would be located within its “setting.”

Locals warned the village had seen shops and services close  and children at the development would have to walk along a stretch of busy road without a pavement to walk to school.

Planning committee member Robert Payne (Weston-super-Mare Central, Liberal Democrat) said: “My view about Churchill is that its totally the wrong place for development. I think its an unsustainable location. […] But I do think it’s not a good use of the council’s limited resources to turn down applications that are likely to win on appeal.”

Clare Hunt (Nailsea Youngwood, Labour) added: “The trouble is, this is going to be repeated year and year again because theres such a need for houses in this country and the one person we’ve not heard from today is perhaps someone looking for a home and there’s so many of them.”

She added: “I think the development looks rather nice and I hope one day someone will have a nice home because that’s what people deserve in this country.”

Tom Nicholson (Banwell and Winscombe, Green) tried to persuade councillors to stand by their decision and turn the plans down once again. He warned against “eating away” at the Mendip Hills, stating: “Sure it’s big but, like you eat an elephant one bite at a time, if you eat away at the AONB one bite at a time we won’t have any left.”

He added: “Since the last meeting, nobody has built a pavement; nobody has built a shop.”

Although it was not directly addressed in the debate, one thing that did happen between the two meetings was the new Labour government’s proposed planning reforms which is set to increase North Somerset’s 15 year house building target by almost 9,000.

Under the Conservative government, the council had been told the area needed 20,000 new homes across the next 15 years, but councillors battled to get the number down to 14,985. Now the Labour government is changing that figure again and space will have to be found in North Somerset for 23,805 new homes over that period — almost 1,600 a year.