iARISH councillors in Chaddesley Corbett are pressing their Wyre Forest counterparts to delay the decision on a controversial affordable housing plan that has split the village.

The bid to build 10 two and three-bedroomed houses and five bungalows on allotments off Hemming Way has led to a deluge of protests and the formation of the 113-strong Friends of the Village Association.

The parish's planning committee voted unanimously this week to ask the district council's development control committee for a four-week deferment to give parish councillors time to properly consider the application and for them to be supplied with all the relevant plans and documents.

Friends association chairman, David Hislop, welcomed the move and said he and other protesters were "utterly surprised and delighted" by the decision.

"I think they realised they had been bypassed by the housing association which has made the application in the way things have progressed in the last few months," he said.

Mr Hislop added the parish council had not been consulted about the location for the affordable housing and it had only just emerged that an agreement that the homes should be exclusively for local people could be rescinded after five years.

The friends association is planning to flood the district council with objections and has leafleted every home in the parish calling on villagers to object.