Campaigners advise government to scale back ecotowns

The Campaign to Protect Rural England is calling for the UK's ecotown programme to be reduced.

According to the CPRE, the government should focus on a small number of exemplary schemes instead and there should be a clear sequential approach in planning policy favouring urban brownfield development over building on green fields.

Kate Gordon, the CPRE's senior planner, said: "Many of the schemes are in locations where development would entail building on greenfield land, including high quality agricultural land, or in areas at risk from flooding."

She added that "fundamental questions" need to be asked about the size of the government's initial ambitions and whether they are realistic in the current property climate.

Housing minister Margaret Becket has suggested that it is vital that the locations of the ecotowns are right and the shortlist of potential towns has been refined after detailed assessments, according to the Guardian.