Conservative councillors at Cornwall Council have refused to support providing an extra £8million to the council’s housing development programme, which they claim is being “mismanaged”.

At a meeting of the full council on Tuesday, the council’s ruling Cabinet had recommended that an extra £8.07m was provided for the Housing Development Programme (HDP).

The HDP is a major project with the council aiming to build an extra 1,000 homes across Cornwall which would be available for local people.

Two pilot developments – at Tolvaddon and Bodmin – are nearing completion and a recent independent review of the scheme gave its backing.

However Tory councillors said that while they supported the general programme they were concerned about the financial details.

Councillor Philip Desmonde said that he had been impressed by the quality of homes which had been built in his ward at Tolvaddon, but he was not so impressed about the need to provide extra funding.

He claimed that the project had gone over budget by 30 per cent.

He said: “In supporting this project we need an investigation into what went wrong to ensure that when the rest of the project is delivered it is successful.

“It has to be delivered on time, on budget and continue to provide quality of design and construction.”

Andrew Mitchell, Cabinet member for housing, said he did not recognise Cllr Desmonde’s figure of 30%.

He claimed that the additional money would only be needed in the event that market sales were not as successful as the council hopes they will be.

But he said that councillors describing it as a “disaster” were wide of the mark.

“This is something that every single one of us in this chamber can be proud of.”

Council leader Adam Paynter also hit back at critics, claiming that they were speaking “nonsense”.

He said: “This scheme has been well managed and we have very, very open about what we are doing.

“The local partnerships came in and looked at what we are doing and were happy with what we are doing.

“We were very, very clear that we are not trying to hide anything, we are absolutely acting properly.”

Cllr Paynter said that the homes being built were bigger than average homes and of better quality. He said it had not been possible to work out the exact amount that the homes could be sold for and said that the money was needed in case the sale value was lower than the build cost.

He added: “The suggestion that we have done anything wrong, that we have tried to hide something and that it has been a disaster are completely wrong.”

The council went into private, confidential session to discuss the finances of the scheme and when they came back voted on the recommendation. That was passed but every Conservative councillor abstained from the vote.

In a statement after the meeting Conservative group leader Linda Taylor said: “Our group made the difficult decision to abstain at today’s full council meeting’s vote to commit another £8m of taxpayer money to Cornwall Council’s Housing Development Plan.

“The reason we abstained rather than voted against, is because we are supportive of the principle of building more houses, particularly affordable ones for people who already live here.

“However today we could not support these poorly costed figures, as this would be pouring more money into propping up this programme, and we are concerned it would be seen as an endorsement of the poor management and financial control exercised so far on this programme.

“What the administration is trying to do here is play around with figures to hide their incompetence with financial management.

“We are unhappy with this and have grave concerns that Cornwall Council will not be able to complete its target of 1,000 houses in the time it had give itself, in part because of this mismanagement.

“The Conservative Group on Cornwall Council will continue to scrutinise and challenge decisions by this administration where appropriate, on behalf of the people of Cornwall who we are all there to serve and represent.”