At least 3,500 homes will have to be built in the Harborough district over the next five years to hit government targets.
Shock new figures were released to councillors at a meeting yesterday.
The new rate is nearly double the former annual requirement which the council had failed to meet.
The new figure means 700 homes will have to be built each year if the council is to catch up by 2019.
But the increased figure has been criticised by the leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition on the council Phil Knowles.
He said: "I am very concerned about the proposed numbers. The roads, and other infrastructure in the district is creaking at the moment. I do not know how we will cope."
He said: "We have not managed to meet the 350 a year requirement, nor the increased rate of 475 which was introduced in 2011/12.
"The suggestion we will now have to build 700 a year is very worrying."
To accommodate the new requirement the council is having to overturn its previous policies since an intervention earlier this year by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.
Mr Pickles said the council did not have the required five year supply of housing land.
A few weeks ago the council approved a controversial 275-home development on rolling farmland on the eastern edge of Leicester in the village of Bushby.
The council had previously rejected the scheme as an unwanted intrusion in the countryside.
Thurnby and Bushby Society chairman Jeff Rosenthal who opposed the scheme said the society had challenged the way the council has changed the annual housing requirement with the Local Government Ombudsman.
He said: "I cannot comment on the detail of the proposal for 700 homes a year.
"But we have challenged the methodology used to produce the figure of 475 in the complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman.
"We have told the Ombudsman that we believe this figure was produced largely by officers without the full involvement of councillors.
"I anticipate a response from the Ombudsman in the next few days."
The 700-home requirement was proposed in a report to an executive panel meeting yesterday which said it was necessary to catch up and meet future targets.
The report said: "Of the past 8.5 years including the current, the annual housing targets (of 350 dwellings per annum from 2006, and 475 per annum from 2011) have only been met in three years.
"Due to the under delivery against annual targets in 5 of the past 8.5 years, the council has applied a 20 percent buffer. Should delivery performance improve, the Council may review its position on using a 20 per cent buffer in the future."
