The first stage in the legal challenge to a massive housing development at Lenham Heath has hit a hurdle, it emerged last night.

Save Our Heath Lands (SOHL) applied to the High Court for a judicial review into the Maidstone Borough Council (MBC) plan to build 5,000 houses in the countryside.

It was refused but the campaign group is now going to seek an oral hearing with a judge to make a more detailed case about their opposition to the Heath Lands development.

The Tory-led MBC group adopted the scheme into its official local plan earlier this year before it was voted out of office at May’s elections.

SOHL campaigner Steve Heeley updated residents at a public meeting at Lenham Community Centre of the latest stage of the judicial review.

He explained SOHL was confident the group would get an oral hearing.

The newly-elected Green Party leader of MBC, Cllr Stuart Jeffery - who is opposed to the scheme - told residents he will urgently launch a local plan review, which “may or may not” provide a way to block it.

Later, he said: “I want to fundamentally change the way we have gone about finding new places for homes, so I want to change it from the focus around large developments in two or three places to one that is more dispersed.

“We can’t avoid the pain but it can be shared more widely and shared across the borough in a fairer way. I may or may not be able to stop Heath Lands - that’s primarily in the hands of the courts.

“There may not be a route for me to stop it completely but we are exploring all the potential outcomes and risks associated with those. There is a whole raft of law and process designed to stop an incoming administration from ripping stuff up.

“All I can do is bring in a better plan as quickly as I can that supersedes the current plan but it won’t replace it immediately. That’s the planning law we have to deal with.”

But Cllr Jeffery said that process could take three years.

He added: “But if (Heath Lands) development starts before that we’re a bit stuffed. It’s a bit of a nightmare.”

Unpicking the Lenham Heath plan is complicated because MBC as master developer entered into a legal and financial agreement with the government quango Homes England, said Lenham Parish Council chairman John Britt.

Cllr Jeffery leads a coalition of Greens, Liberal Democrats and independents who voted against the LP.

Mr Heeley claimed that Lenham was a “sacrificial lamb” because the previous Tory council administration was keen to protect areas in the south of the borough from development.

It has been a long-held belief that Lenham may have been in MBC’s sights because it is sited on the edge of the borough and had independent local councillors.

Last night’s meeting heard from Cllr Jeffery, Kent County Council’s Cllr Shellina Prendergast, parliamentary candidate for the Conservatives and former MP Helen Whately and parish chairman Mr Britt.

Around 150 residents attended the meeting and heard from Labour parliamentary candidate Mel Dawkins and her Green Party counterpart Hannah Temple.