THE City Council has said it will look into taking legal advice in opposing some proposed housing sites put forward by Wiltshire Council.

As part of its Local Plan, Wiltshire Council is proposing building thousands of new homes in and around Salisbury including in Harnham, Laverstock and Britford.

At a meeting of the city council's planning committee on Monday night, the administration decided to explore the possibility of taking legal advice and the possibility of working with other neighbouring parishes in opposing some proposed sites.

The council will talk to the other local parishes that are planning similar action and figure out what it can afford before then entering into any sort of arrangement, but there is money left in the city council's budget which can be used for this.

The planning committee cannot do this itself, but it would have to appoint a working group to communicate with the other parishes, or it would be done through the council leaders.

The motion also ensured that the council would only use the money left within the budget and would not incur extra costs.

Independent councillor Annie Riddle - who is also one of the council leaders - said during the meeting: "We haven't very long [if we are to get legal advice], we should be representing our residents who are completely fed up.

"And if we don't do this we would just have to leave it to individual members of the committee to submit individual objections which frankly will get nowhere.

"The city needs to actually have a voice on this to represent its residents, in my view."

Cllr Hibbert raised the possibility of legal advice costing large sums of money, and cllr Riddle added: "I take your point that we need to make sure we don't insure spiralling costs."

During the meeting the council also voted to support an application for a solar farm by Wiltshire Wildlife Community Energy next to the sewage works at Petersfinger.

There will be drop-in consultation events where you can have your say on the proposals (see page 7).

Each session will be informal and will give people a chance to meet officers and to find out more about the plan which details housing, infrastructure, and land across Wiltshire over the next 15 years.