Video: Green field development 'should not take priority', say countryside campaigners If all currently viable brown field sites, many of which are located in the South East and London, were developed for housing they would provide for around 1.5 million new homes, according to the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Kate Houghton, a planning officer with the pressure group, was speaking ahead of a speech by planning minister Nick Boles in which he is expected to advocate increased development of green field sites in the UK to alleviate the critical need for new housing. "If we give up those green field sites now, before those brown field sites are developed, those brown field sites are likely to languish," she said. So not only do you lose countryside unnecessarily but you also halt investment in towns and cities and you halt those place being reinvigorated.