The Mayor of Watford is in favour of building more garden villages to cope with being forced to build an “unrealistic” number of new homes.

The government recently told a number of councils across the country to double the amount of new homes in an attempt to tackle the housing crisis.

Last year the Department for Communities and Local Government suggested 266,000 homes a year will be needed over the next decade.

Officers at Watford Borough Council worked out this could lead to Watford needing to build double the numbers of homes currently being planned, although the exact figures have not yet been made public.

Dorothy Thornhill fears the town will be “unable to accommodate” an increase in the number of new homes without infrastructure such as school places and roads being considered.

After meeting with other leaders of councils in Hertfordshire – including Three Rivers, Dacorum, Hertsmere and St Albans – she is considering looking into building “an entirely different new settlement”.

Mayor Thornhill – who admitted she still has two children in their thirties living at home due to the housing crisis – said: “We are between a rock and a hard place with development and have think about whether we want a new settlement or have town cramming.

“The government quite rightly is facing up to the fact that we have a housing shortage and asa local authority we want to contribute to the housing crisis but feel that we have been disempowered and have less power that we had before.

“We know what our housing targets were in Watford and we were meeting them, even though we know that development is unpopular in the town so we were making sure we were putting the right houses in the right places. But I feel we just cannot meet these new targets.”

Mayor Thornhill added that councils across the country have traditionally addressed their own needs for housing but this sometimes resulted in some councils being able to avoid “difficult decisions” and build less than others.

As a result, the government will decide how many homes should be built instead so that every council has the same targets,

Mayor Thornhill believes this is unfair on Watford, as it only has borwn belt and no green belt unlike many surrounding areas.

She explained “The only way is up with brown belt and we do not want to keep building high rise buildings – particularly in the suburbs.

“It is different for places such as St Albans where there is green belt. There is no way we can accommodate what the government is doing without building without building a new settlement.

“Instead of scrambling around to find a few houses to build here and there, should we now be bold and get the infrastructure to build something entirely different such as more garden villages?”

She added that the new expectations from the government will mean the council will have to reassess its local plan and its targets for affordable housing.

Mayor Thornhill added: “We are going back to the drawing board and starting again with issues such as restarting the local plan.

“The system is pro-development and everything is stacked in favour of the developer but other issues such as affordable housing will be tackled as we will not be letting developers get away with what they want.

“This whole thing is unreasonable and unrealistic but we are not taking the public down with us.”