A CONTROVERSIAL housing masterplan could be delayed for a fourth time following “confusion”, mayor Andy Burnham has revealed.

Leaders pledged to have a new version of the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework ready for public consultation in October, after Mr Burnham ordered a “radical rewrite” in 2017.

The mayor said he wanted to see significantly less green belt land put forward for potential development in the long term strategic plan for the region, with an ambitious desire that there be “no net loss”.

But it appears bosses will not meet next month’s deadline, which Mr Burnham blamed on “confusion” caused by the release of new population statistics – and a forthcoming revised government methodology for assessing how many homes need to be built.

Mr Burnham told an audience at his latest question time event the delay was “frustrating” because it “throws things back in the air again”.

READ MORE: Burnham pushes back controversial Spatial Framework plans

A draft spatial framework for housing in Greater Manchester for the next 20 years was first released in 2016, prior to there being an elected mayor. It received 27,000 responses with many criticising the amount of greenbelt land which had been earmarked for housing development, including 16,400 homes built in Bolton before 2035 — 7,000 on green sites.

The M61 corridor was allocated for housing sites in the plan on open spaces near Lostock and Westhoughton and the north area of the borough was designated the "North Bolton Area of Search", but with no specific sites.

The plan prompted protests across Greater Manchester and one of Mr Burnham’s platforms for his election was a rewrite of the spatial framework.

Mr Burnham told the audience in Oldham: “It’s a difficult process agreeing this but we’re in the final stages now where we’re in the radical rewrite that I promised that I would do and councils have been reducing the green belt take, so that process has been underway in my time as mayor.

“I am trying though and I continue to try to minimise the take from green belt.

“That is my position, but I am one of 11 people trying to agree this plan.”

Mr Burnham said two emerging issues had thrown ‘confusion’ into the situation at this late stage.

“Firstly new population figures came out last week and the figures that have been published by the Office for National Statistics are unexpectedly lower than we thought they would be,” he said.

“But the second thing is the government are going to publish a new methodology for how you assess housing need, which then has to be applied to those population figures.

“So we still don’t know what that figure will be and here we are we’re in the process of trying to agree to it has, I’m afraid, added some confusion just at a critical moment for us.”