At present most houses are built in the countryside but the government has signalled it wants to reverse the trend.

However in the village of Balsall Common, between Birmingham and Coventry, locals are angry that their green areas are being eyed up by developers.

Prime brown field land

Police are being brought in to protect its lush fields which have been redesignated for a 200-house development.

"There won't be any green belt," local resident Mary Hitchcock said. "Just down you can start walking to Coventry... you can be in Coventry in ten minutes walk."

There is an alternative to the urbanisation of green belts. Right across Britain old industrial heartlands, brown-fields, are now largely derelict.

From foundary to waterfront housing

In the Black country, just to the west of Birmingham, housing has been built on the site of what used to be an old foundry

But building homes on once smoke-blackened heartland comes at a cost.

The outlay for building each house on the Black Country ex-industrial land was between two and eight thousand pounds more than on a green field site.

Cost is not the only hurdle though.

Developer George Carter: contamination is a major hurdle (17")

The Black Country Development Corporation spokesman George Carter says a veritable cocktail of chemicals and contamination can also get in the way of such projects.

"In the Black country you've had what we call the A to Z of contamination arsenic to zinc, heavy metals - you name it," he says.

George Carter - developer

Seemingly undeterred, ministers are thought to want 60% of new homes to be built in urban areas.

One option the government could look at to make that happen is through taxing more profitable green field sites to give an added financial incentive to develop derelict lands to high standards.

The problem is most old industrial land is in the Midlands and the North - the biggest demand for new homes is in the South East.

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