THE Campaign to Protect Rural England yesterday launched as a three point charter to ‘save the countryside’.

The group believes that unsustainable and increasing pressure is being placed on the countryside, and sensible planning is undermined by short-sighted pursuit of economic growth at any cost.

Amongst their demands are pleas for more housing in the right areas, for local communities to have a fair say, and for the government not to ‘sacrifice’ the countryside.

The group’s president, Sir Andrew Motion, said: “Precisely at the moment when we should be defending the countryside, and making it more accessible because it gives us all what we need more freely than anything else under the sun – we are at grave risk of losing it.

“If we are to reverse this trend we must act immediately and fight for as long as it takes.”