THE Government’s plans to build 14 so-called “eco-towns” – one of them near York – burst into a flaming row yesterday between the housing minister and one of Britain’s most respected countryside charities.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England is one of many organisations which have questioned the eco-town project on the grounds of costs and environmental friendliness.

The CPRE has pointed out that all but one of the proposed sites, which were supposed to use brown-field land, are in fact mainly on greenfield sites, including the one at the former RAF base at Church Fenton, near York.

The CPRE has made repeated requests for a meeting with housing minister Caroline Flint, whose spokesman yesterday launched a bitter attack on the charity, saying it was not interested in affordable rural housing for the low-paid and “perpetuating myths” about rural developments.

The CPRE issued a counter statement strongly denying these charges and pointing out that Ms Flint had repeatedly refused to have a meeting to discuss rural housing problems.

Said the statement: “We are disappointed that the minister has responded to our call for a re-think on the eco-towns programme by attacking our credentials.”

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Parliament yesterday to demonstrate against the proposed new towns, one of several pet initiatives from Prime Minister Gordon Brown which have run into massive public opposition.

It has been suggested by housing experts that although billed as having large numbers of affordable dwellings for first-time buyers, the average cost of a home in the new towns would be £300,000.

And it was revealed at the weekend that the Government stands to make hundreds of millions of pounds profit by selling off the proposed sites to property developers, as would happen with the Church Fenton project.