Protest groups fighting development on green fields have reacted with dismay after the Government said building targets for brown-field land were being scrapped.

Critics say green fields will be put “unnecessarily in the path of bulldozers” after Chancellor George Osborne announced plans to overhaul the planning system to encourage house-building – and boost the economy – in his Budget speech.

The planning reforms include the scrapping of targets which Bradford Council and other planning authorities use to encourage building on previously-developed land.

Heaton Township Association (HTA) chairman Elizabeth Hellmich, who is spearheading a drive to prevent building on green fields across the Bradford district, said scrapping targets would lead to an even greater stagnation of previously-developed sites.

Her campaign is being supported by the Telegraph & Argus’s Save Our Green Spaces campaign.

Mrs Hellmich said: “I fail to see that by giving developers free rein to build wherever they like it will improve the economy.

“They will just build on green field and leave dead areas of brown-field land elsewhere.”

The move is designed to simplify the planning process.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said the plan would be “a potentially devastating threat to the countryside.”

Neil Sinden, CPRE’s director of policy, said: “The planning system exists to prevent unsustainable, unwanted and environmentally- damaging development.

“Without national brown-field targets for housing we could have lost twice as much green-field land to development over the last decade.

“This move puts green fields unnecessarily in the path of the bulldozers.

“The Chancellor’s default ‘yes to development’ threatens both the environment and sound planning.

“The proposed land auctions are hugely risky and have failed to get backing from developers, local government or campaigners.

“In this context, Mr Osborne’s reassurances on protection of the Green Belt are nothing more than a fig leaf.”

Councillor The Reverend Paul Flowers, Bradford Council’s portfolio holder for planning, said he would welcome any planning reforms, which would make the system easier to understand for Council officers and the public.

But he said: “I would caution that not all developers are always full of the milk of human kindness and, therefore, one has to have a number of systems in place to make sure that what is planned to be developed is what the community wants to be developed – that is what planning committees are there for.”

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