House building referenda proposed under the Government's Community Right to Build would just create community conflict, warns a report from the Rural Coalition representing many major groups. It also warns that the sprawl estate approach to urban extensions needs to end.
The Rural Challenge is a reaction by six major groups to the new Government policies and it firmly rejects plans to allow communities to expand their housing without planning permission if a majority of residents agree.
But it says there needs to be radical changes in planning policy where market towns need to grow.
It says incremental development around towns on estates has failed to produce integrated communities and such developments lack facilities, provide no economic gain and have no sense of place.
The LDF framework has failed to encourage councils to embrace place shaping.
"Building at high density, and therefore using land efficiently, can help to protect rural communities' environmental assets," it says.
"And housing built at high densities - densities typical of traditional villages and market towns - can be of an excellent standard, both in terms of the homes themselves and their surroundings. However, if high-density housing developments are poorly designed, they create social dislocation and environmental detriment."
It recommends a plan-led approach including masterplans, community participation - enquiry-by-design, for instance - and strong partnerships including local planning authorities.
It recommends transforming "eco town" guidance into a code of development for sustainable communities.
"On its current course, with no change in policy and no commitment to action, much of the countryside is becoming part dormitory, part theme park and part retirement home," said Coalition chairman Matthew Taylor.
"We need a fundamental change of approach at both national and local levels to give rural communities a more sustainable future. The Rural Coalition believes the Government's commitment to localism and the Big Society opens the door to those reforms - but as yet there is a very real risk that in practice cuts will fall heaviest in rural communities which may lose services altogether, and opportunities will be missed to make rural communities prosper.
"For 50 years or more, policy has undervalued the countryside and failed to meet the needs of rural communities. The result is starkly apparent: rural communities have become increasingly less sustainable and less self-sufficient. Today we publish a blueprint for the Big Society in small places - if the Government is serious about localism, it should rise to the challenge."
The report says local authorities should find innovative solutions to lack of affordable housing in rural areas such as reforming the housing revenue account to allow them to keep council house receipts.
It says proper account also needs to be taken of the effect of public spending cuts in rural areas.
"The Rural Challenge calls for action now to ensure that our countryside continues to thrive into the future, a living countryside with its beauty and tranquillity soundly protected," said Campaign to Protect Rural England chief executive Shaun Spiers.
"Central to this is a reinvigorated planning system, in which local communities and councils are empowered to shape their neighbourhoods. CPRE looks forward to playing its part in ensuring such a positive future for the countryside."
