Kingston Council has deferred a decision on plans to build 950 homes on Tolworth’s Toby Jug site.

The plans, put forward by Meyer Homes, are the latest in the former Tesco site saga that has lasted for more than a decade.

Councillor Eric Humphrey proposed the council defer the decision, despite officers recommending it be approved, because of Sadiq Khan’s “weighty” new draft London Plan.

He said: “Our officers, if they are not going to get hernias, are going to need trolleys to cart the thing around with them. We have got until late March to respond to this very substantial document, and this [site] is a very major development.

“The officers are going to have to look at the draft London Plan to see quite what the implications are for a development of this character.”

But the draft plan, which councils have until March 2018 to respond to, will not be published until autumn 2019.

Councillor Malcolm Self, who opposed deferring the decision, said the plan means “very little at the moment”.

He said: “If we wait – what do we wait? Another three months, four months, five months, six months? And I would have thought by then the applicant would have appealed the decision anyway, on the grounds of non-determination.

“Just waiting for the new London Plan to gain more weight is unnecessary.”

The deferral also gives Meyer Homes more time to work with officers to explore the possibility of including more affordable housing in the plans, and more time to reach a legal agreement to ensure adequate community benefits - as required by Communities Secretary Sajid Javid when he dismissed the developer's previous appeal.