Shock figures have revealed rural Oxfordshire is being concreted over at an alarming rate.

Environmentalists are angry more than half of all homes being built in the county are springing up on farmland.

It means county planners are well below Government targets, which urge authorities to build 60 per cent of new homes on already urbanised sites. Only 46 per cent of homes built since 1996 were built on previously developed land.

The figure comes hot on the heels of a recommendation by government-appointed inspectors suggesting 75,000 homes be built over a 20-year period in the county - double the number Oxfordshire County Council officials had bargained for. Oxford Friends of the Earth said this sort of threat only made it more imperative that as many homes as possible were built on brownfield sites. But much of the building which has taken place on previously-undeveloped land in the last three years has been built on greenfield sites - typically farmland.

Most of the development has been concentrated around Didcot, Bicester, Witney and Banbury, and on the edge of Oxford.

Oxfordshire County Council planning assistant Dawn Pettis said: "The four country towns where the bulk of our building has been done since 1996 are strategically-built towns. For example, Didcot is built close to the A34 and Witney close to the A40."

The council claims it is difficult to avoid building on greenfield sites because of the rural nature of the county.

Ms Pettis insisted there were lots of towns, such as Henley and Chipping Norton, which simply did not lend themselves to being extended because development would ruin their historic character.

But Oxford FoE spokesman Richard Mann was far from convinced that enough was being done to make the best use of the buildings the county already had.

He said: "There are things like living above shops and extending existing houses."

Story date: Saturday 23 October

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