THE head of the official body charged with protecting the English countryside is to call for a review of laws preserving the green belt, clearing the way for thousands of homes to be built on safeguarded land.

Sir Martin Doughty, chairman of Natural England, will use a speech tomorrow to argue that surging demand for new homes means that “the sanctity of green belt land should be questioned”.

Doughty will say consideration should be given to allowing environmentally friendly developments on the 4.2m acres of green belt designed to prevent urban sprawl so that the countryside can be protected from wholesale development.

His proposals have angered some environmental campaigners and are likely to alarm residents of green belt towns and villages who value their tranquillity.

Doughty’s call comes as government housing advisers warned this weekend that the government’s target of building 3m homes by 2020 was too low.

Doughty, speaking on his quango’s first anniversary, will say the green belt “was certainly not intended to deal with the complex environmental challenges that face us today.

“Nobody could deny, and we do not, that the green belt has achieved its primary purpose in constraining urban sprawl. But the consequence of this is that development tends to leapfrog over the green belt and land in much more vulnerable parts of the natural environment.

“We must therefore review the green belt and commit more effort to making the green belt something that adds value.”

The proposal has been criticised by campaigners who believe the green belt’s role is as important today as it was 50 years ago.

Tom Oliver, head of rural policy at the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), the lobby group headed by the author Bill Bryson, said Natural England “fails to recognise the virtue of the green belt and that its permanence is what makes it so effective”. Oliver also expressed concern that Natural England agreed with the government’s 3m homes target. “[Natural England] accepts the government’s endorsement of household projections for 2020 which is extraordinary,” he said.

“Natural England have a statutory duty to protect and conserve the natural environment and here they are accepting projections which are not justified in their own terms and which are certain to undermine the credibility of Natural England’s position as an independent body.” The CPRE will release its own assessment of the quango’s first year of operation tomorrow.

There are 14 green belts in England, the first of which were instituted in 1955. The biggest is the metropolitan green belt around London, but cities such as Oxford, Nottingham and York also have them. A single green belt surrounds the conurbation of Liverpool and Manchester while another hems in the urban regions of south and west Yorkshire.

In total, green belts cover 13% of England. Development is allowed only in exceptional cases of housing shortage.

Supporters of development argue that some green belt land is far from picturesque while some so-called “brownfield” sites in cities that are favoured for development can be valuable wildlife havens.

But opponents argue that once some building is allowed, it would be difficult to control.

Jacqui Lait, the shadow planning minister, said: “There is degraded green belt but I would argue that should that degraded land be built on, the temptation will be for the next site to be built on. The next bit of land then becomes degraded and then there’s no green belt.”

There has already been some pressure on the green belt. Earlier this year, Waltham Forest council in Essex objected to a development of 119 homes near Chingford.

The neighbouring Epping Forest council had agreed to the plans because 80% of the development was to be affordable housing. The plans were approved this month.

Doughty will warn that any new developments on greenfield sites, such as Gordon Brown’s proposed eco-towns, must be of exceptionally high quality.

“Our fear remains that eco-towns will become carbon-neutral battery farms for people, lacking any radical design edge that could see homes for people and habitats for wildlife integrated into the same high-quality green space,” he said.

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