Who will save the garden of England?

Three men are planning an outrage near you. They are respected politicians and each will protest his good intention. But the outcome will be an overheated, overpopulated and unlovely South-East of England.

Today, Chancellor Gordon Brown launches an attack on the planning controls which have protected the countryside and the character of the region for the past 50 years. His Comprehensive Spending Review will provide millions for "affordable homes" to be built around London and call for new fast-track development zones to free up land in the region's "hot spots". Later in the week, John Prescott will announce changes to planning which may reduce local control over decisions.

The third partner in this unholy alliance, Mayor Ken Livingstone, is also implicated in this assault. His recent London Plan calls for a massive amount of building in London and the South-East.

The Chancellor will sound benevolent when he speaks today. He will describe the critical need for homes that people in the public sector can afford and the need to keep the economy growing. But if protection for the countryside is relaxed, millions of houses, as well as huge infrastructure projects, will be built on greenfield sites. This will change the countryside and towns of the South-East beyond recognition.

Naturally, the Government is talking up generalised benefits from relaxing planning constraints. The detail is less appetising. Unspoilt villages around Stansted will be swallowed by a new town. The historic city of Cambridge will be overshadowed by an unregulated business zone. Cliffe Marshes in Kent may be concreted over for a new airport.

The South-East is often described as if it is just London's sprawl and a few prosperous small towns. It is much more. Its character comes from the variety of landscapes - its downs, gentle greenery, wildlife-rich marshes. All are beautiful in their own right - and a valuable recreational resource for the population.

The South-East needs places where we can go to put some tranquillity back into our souls. All this is lost on Mr Brown, Mr Prescott and Mr Livingstone. In 10 years, if they get their way, the garden of England will be its patio.

It is hard to believe a Government which claims to put the environment first - remember Tony Blair's passionate speech on how Green issues were "at the heart" of New Labour - could contemplate such large-scale vandalism. But Mr Brown is obsessed with the idea that planning regulations are an obstacle to economic productivity.

All along he's peddled the view of the current CBI leadership, and their American business gurus, that removing development controls will generate more building, more growth, more wealth.

Mr Brown is also worried about social justice and affordability. The whole New Labour project will be jeopardised if public services in the South-East crash for lack of workers.

But these proposals are not the answer. Why build on greenfield sites when there are still huge reservoirs of brownfield sites, land which used to be factories or car parks? And why does economic expansion have to be in the crowded South-East?

Other regions are crying out for economic regeneration. But Mr Brown and Mr Livingstone have patched up old disagreements to create an inhumane vision worthy of the Soviet Union. Both share an interest in the notion of London as Megacity, catering for a huge predicted rise in population and an everexpanding economy.

Mr Livingstone's London Plan has a real commitment to environmental protection. He speaks of containing London's sprawl, creating homes on brownfield land with no intrusion into the green belt. His aim of shifting development from the west to the east by using the run-down land of the Thames Gateway is also admirable, as are the development principles. The plan proposes using brownfield sites and creating proper mixed communities with good public transport. But, in reality, the environmental implications of Livingstone's plans are just as alarming.

He, too, calls for "a new airport in the South- East", three new river crossings, new towns, a new port and even, at more megalomaniac moments, a new Channel crossing. Kent will be the dumping ground for these ideas. The Mayor is like a cat that relieves itself in the neighbour's garden to keep his own territory clean.

There's no way these plans could be realised without severe impact on the countryside. Any growth in air traffic would cause massive environmental damage and a new airport would be catastrophic. Even increasing existing runway capacity would be devastating.

Philip Sherwood, a local campaigner for the Council for the Protection for Rural England, estimates that a third east-west runway at Heathrow "would involve the destruction of 4,000 homes, the forcible eviction of 10,000 people and a land-take of 665 hectares, most of which is in the green belt."

This is in addition to the 125 hectares of green belt already lost to build a new terminal at Heathrow. It's the lack of Government funding, not a shortage of greenfield sites, that prevents affordable homes from being built.

Don't be taken in by Gordon Brown giving money to the Housing Corporation which funds housing associations to build affordable homes.

They'll be after greenfield sites, too, because, without Government money to clean up existing sites, greenfield sites are the cheaper option. Private developers are exploiting this situation because relaxing planning controls means they can build their most profitable product - executive homes - on greenfield sites.

Solutions to the pressure on the South-East lie elsewhere. Priorities must change so that one region does not grow at the expense of others. Urban regeneration in economically less buoyant areas has to be prioritised. Even the South-East has such places, such as Margate, Ramsgate and Hastings.

The UK needs to use planning to manage economic growth and environmental protection. Instead, the Government seems hell-bent on dismantling protection to facilitate economic growth at all costs.

With such policies, it won't take long to destroy what made the South-East so attractive to start with: the easily accessible lovely places. Yes, we can have Singaporean conditions of high growth, high buildings and high stress all across the region. We can make the pursuit of growth our only goal and damn the consequences.

But who really wants to live that way? Not me.