PARTS of rural Oxfordshire will be turned into a "concrete jungle" over the next 16 years if plans calling for 75,000 new homes in the county go through.

Regional planners have recommended nearly doubling the number of new houses to be built in the South East over this period.

The 1.1 million homes - the equivalent of five cities the size of Southampton - would involve building new towns at Milton Keynes and in Kent, Essex and Sussex.

Oxfordshire would not be one of the areas worst affected if the new planning policies were adopted - but would still be expected to take a substantial increase in development.

The proposals prompted a chorus of protest - and warnings that large swathes of green belt land would disappear.

Serplan, the regional planning group for the South East, is calling for 3,750 new homes each year in Oxfordshire.

Up to the year 2016 a total of 75,000 homes would be built in the county, 20,000 more than currently envisaged.

Witney MP Shaun Woodward urged Environment Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott to reject the suggestion immediately.

He said: "The report nearly doubles original house-building proposals - we will see huge areas of Oxfordshire concreted over and witness a considerable loss of beautiful countryside."

The Council for the Protection of Rural England said the report, which Mr Prescott has until the end of the year to either approve or reject, would lead to a "nightmare future of urban decay, traffic congestion and sprawling development".

And Tony Bosworth, of Friends of the Earth, said: "This will wreck some of Britain's most beautiful areas."

Story date: Monday 11 October

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