The government is putting pressure on the West Midlands for a "green field housing bonanza", countryside campaigners have claimed.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England said that the region had become "a new battleground" for government proposals to push through more housing development at all costs.

The latest government predictions of housing requirements could see 50% more land than currently planned being allocated for house building across the West Midlands over the next 25 years, with the figures more than doubling in some areas.

The CPRE said that this would be "incompatible" with the region's present emphasis on brownfield development and urban regeneration.

The West Midlands Regional Assembly has been consulting West Midlands councils about the implications.

Some councils, such as Shropshire and Herefordshire, have told the Regional Assembly that they could not meet the higher figures without great damage to the countryside and market towns.

Some urban authorities are also warning that they have limited building land and that developers would abandon house building on derelict or under-used sites that need remediation if they were given cheap green field alternatives.

However, some other councils in the region want to go along with government plans. Worcestershire County Council is contemplating expansions of Worcester and Redditch into the countryside and Coventry and Warwickshire have not ruled out sacrificing large areas of Green Belt in order to allow expansion.

Towns such as Burton-on-Trent, Hereford, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Telford and Worcester, which are already targeted for development, could also be involved and the CPRE warned that some might even double in size over twenty years.

However, others such as Lichfield and Warwick and Leamington, which have been growing fast in recent years, would have to keep on growing to fulfil the higher numbers.

The CPRE said that the government's belief that building more houses will reduce prices was misguided. They said that the housebuilding industry would build at the much higher rate and believe that developers could end up 'cherry picking' the most profitable greenfield sites.

The exodus of people from the city to the countryside would then accelerate, keeping prices unaffordable in rural areas and undermining efforts to make areas like East Birmingham, the Black Country and North Staffordshire more desirable places in which to live.

The CPRE said that this could lead to worsening quality of life, loss of countryside, increased traffic congestion, longer journeys to work and more pressure on natural resources.

Peter Langley, Vice Chairman of West Midlands CPRE, said: "The West Midlands needs more affordable homes, but swamping the market with greenfield land and playing fast and loose with the region's long-established Green Belts won't achieve that: it's a form of environmental vandalism.

"The Regional Assembly must stick to its guns and resist government pressure to open the floodgates to new housing."

(KMcA)