A campaign has been launched to prevent developers from building thousands of new homes on greenfield sites.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) is aiming to raise £5,000 to help it defend the countryside against, what it calls, “excessive and unattainable housing targets.”

It believes these targets will cause enormous damage to the countryside and lead to more rural areas being cherry-picked for housing by developers.

“They [local authorities] are being forced to allocate far more land for housing than is likely to be needed, with many local authorities releasing inappropriate greenfield sites in order to meet their targets,” says the CPRE.

“Because of the abundance of land that local authorities are allocating, developers are able to pick and choose the ‘best’ sites for them – invariably greenfield.”

The CPRE says Cornwall has been asked to build 50,000 new homes – the equivalent to five ‘Truros’ – while Oxfordshire is required to build 100,000 new homes, double previous targets.

“This is not planning – it is chaos.” added the CPRE.

“We must fight for a system which does not allow developers free rein to build in the countryside, which responds to genuine local housing need[s] and which gets the houses we need built, but in the best locations.”

The organisation says it actively supports house building but would like to see a more carefully thought-out strategy with a common sense approach to planning.

“We want to see new houses built in the best places, which is generally within towns and cities, rather than sprawling into the countryside,” added the CPRE.

“But to achieve this, we must persuade ministers to listen to our arguments and adopt our recommendations for a more realistic and sensible approach to planning in England.”