A postcard campaign has been launched by the Devon branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, to highlight the detrimental impact of large-scale housing developments across the county.

The countryside charity is urging residents to send the specially-designed ‘Postcard from Devon’ to Kit Malthouse MP, the Government’s Housing and Planning Minister -illustrated by photos of bulldozers digging up the countryside.

The charity also said it welcomed comments made last week by MP Anne Marie Morris. The Newton Abbot MP had said the formula used to determine the number of new houses set out in Local Plans is flawed, and the current planning system is not robust enough to ensure new homes are affordable and suit the needs of the local population.

The CPRE ‘Postcard from Devon’ campaign was started after the housing minister’s recent visit to the charity’s meeting in March, where a report presented evidence that the number of new homes being planned for Devon far exceeds the real need. A spokesperson for CPRE Devon said Mr Malthouse admitted on the day he had not read the findings of the report before his visit.

In May Mr Malthouse announced a major new scheme for ‘20,000 much-needed properties’ as part of a garden community across Exeter, East Devon and Teignbridge.

CPRE Devon’s Director Penny Mills said: ‘Those of us who value Devon’s beautiful countryside and green spaces look on in horror at the Government’s “urgent push to build more, better, faster”.

‘More houses are needed, but nowhere near as many as the Government claims, and they need to be the right kind of homes at prices local people can afford.

‘Balancing local development and a vibrant economy with a tranquil and beautiful environment is doubly important in a county that’s so dependent on income from tourism - precisely why we started our ‘Postcard from Devon’ campaign.’

Dr Philip Bratby, of the charity, added: ‘Following CPRE Devon’s Sandy Park housing seminar, Kit Malthouse promised that he would read CPRE Devon’s independent report ‘Devon Housing Needs Evidence’. If he did subsequently read our report, he obviously did not understand it.

‘He is still planning to build 300,000 new homes per year in England by the mid-2020s, although there is no evidence to support this figure. Even the Minister himself has described it as a ’mythical’ number.

‘Since mythical actually means ’untrue’, ’made-up’ or ’invented’, one has to wonder why the Government is wasting taxpayers’ money on planning for the building of huge numbers of houses in Devon, which the evidence shows are not needed.’