RESTRICTIONS will be placed on future developments on green belt land being sold off by the Ministry of Defence.

Bromley Council's development control committee has voted to keep the former MoD Aquila site, off Golf Road and Otford Close, within the green belt.

Site owner QinetiQ, which was formerly the Defence Research and Evaluation Agency, claimed 70 per cent of the land was already intensively developed with industrial-style buildings and asked for restrictions to be relaxed. But the committee chose to designate the site a Major Developed Site (MDS) giving it greater control over future housing proposals.

Development on MDS sites must not exceed the height of existing buildings, occupy a larger area than the existing buildings or have a worse impact than the existing development on the openness of the green belt.

But the decision is unlikely to have any impact on proposals to build 280 houses on the site.

A spokesman for the council's planning committee said: "The MDS designation will not have any weight until the borough's unitary development plan is finalised in around two years."

The plan will guide the use and development of land within the borough for the next decade.

The committee's decision is expected to be rubber stamped by the full council on July 8.