Croxley Green has been forced to shoulder the burden of overdevelopment in Watford, according to a councillor.

Pressure on school places and traffic jams have been attributed to the increasing number of homes being built in the town.

And Cllr Alison Wall, who represents Durrants ward on Three Rivers District Council, said Croxley Green Secondary School was set up to support children in West Watford who struggle to get a school place.

She accused Watford Borough Council of not having a “balanced development plan” and suggested moving the proposed site for the new school in Baldwins Lane to an area being targeted by developers for 200 homes and offices in Ascot Road, Watford.

This development could be built next to the proposed Cassiobridge Station, which will be part of the Metropolitan Line Extension project.

Designs are in "very early concept stages" but a planning application could be submitted for the homes later this year.

Cllr Alison Wall said: “If they have got the space for an office building and that number of homes, there must be enough space for a new school.

“It is also the principle of it. Watford Borough Council are not looking at the infrastructure. They are just looking at housing and they are just allowing developers to dictate what happens.

“There doesn’t seem to be any balanced development plan in Watford.”

The Durrants ward representative also believes the school should be built in Watford because a large number of parents in West Watford supported St Clement Danes School when the idea was first put forward.

She added: “That field should be kept as Green Belt because it acts as a split between two communities. If you start developing these sites it will unite the communities and there will be no sense of community.”

She also said it was highly unlikely the school would on site by 2017.

Cllr Rabi Martins, chairman of Watford Borough Council’s development control committee, rejected suggestions the town is over-developed.

He said: “The issue for me is not the number, but the quality of the accommodation. What we have to try and reduce is lots of blocks of flats that are badly built and cramped.

“There are issues around infrastructure. I would like to be able to insist a new doctors surgery is part of a new development. But successive governments and this government have eroded a lot of the planning authority local councils have.”

The land at the bottom of Baldwins Lane has still not been secured for the school site in Croxley Green.

TFL has admitted they want to see houses built on the site, which would increase the price of the land.

The MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke warned the opening could be delayed and Ms Wall supported this view.

Mr Gauke told the Watford Observer: “Essentially the county council has said that the land has not got planning permission for houses and it was not included in the plans, so trying to price it up as an area for residential development is not right.”

Hertfordshire County Council has been trying to buy the 30-acre site worth £3.5million since 2013.

The council refused to be drawn on whether the land price had increased because of TFL’s proposals.