Unleashing a wave of 'market price' house building across the country will do little or nothing for those in greatest housing need, countryside campaigners said.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) warned government plans would cripple efforts to regenerate rundown urban areas and scar the countryside.

The CPRE has asked the government to reconsider proposals on planning for housing saying the policy will leave a housing sprawl across the country and work against efforts to regenerate run-down areas.

The proposals aim to bring in recommendations for radical changes to the planning system first made by Kate Barker, a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, in her review of housing supply. The central idea is to make market forces — in the form of house prices — a dominant factor in the scale, location and release of land for housing development.

The campaigners argue that the plans will mean developers are given land for building in areas of high house prices, with the aim that an increase in supply will bring down the price.

But, they say, this would trigger a wave of house building on greenfield sites and in the most attractive towns and villages.

Meanwhile, areas that tend to have low prices, such as run-down parts of towns that are crying out for regeneration, will be ignored, say the CRPE.

Adding further weight to the debate, a separate coalition group has been formed to raise concerns over government plans to modify the planning system.

The Blueprint Group brings together bodies including the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), the National Housing Federation, homeless charity Shelter and the Royal Town Planning Institute.

It too aims to ensure the ideal of sustainable communities is not overlooked in the government's drive to address housing need.

The group hopes that by presenting a united front, its concerns about consultation paper Planning for Housing Provision, published this summer, are more likely to be taken on board.

The government says it will publish a new draft of the document in the autumn, which will be followed by a 12-week consultation period.

But the CPRE argues that by then the key principles will have been largely established - after a rushed half-length public consultation period closed recently in the height of summer.