How seriously can we take the prophets of doom?

For the past six months, I have been ploughing through the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, the prophet who told the Israelites repeatedly that they were terrible sinners and that exile beckoned unless they repented. Every chapter offers the same message, although a different analogy is used to emphasise the point – a tilting pot, a linen belt, a basket of figs and so on.

Now more than halfway through, I have cause to reflect what Jeremiah might have been doing if he'd been around today.

My conclusion? He would have made the perfect chief executive of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England.

Utterly consistent, with no care for popularity, the CPRE continues to prophesy catastrophe carried on the hooves of the rampant housebuilder. Each of these denunciations is packaged with Old Testament zeal. One was even called Exodus and, if memory serves, prophesised that major homebuilders would be engulfed in a sea of mock-Georgian porches unless they mended their wicked ways. I have now been receiving CPRE scrolls for almost 10 years and I still have no idea how much is verifiable. Certainly, the core of its message resonates – that housebuilders have replaced large tracts of countryside with terrible "could-be-anywhere" estates. On that basis alone, it deserves a regular hearing. But what about the numbers? Who to believe?

Of the data presented by CPRE, the figures on planning permission should be robust, but the material on land banks is rife with difficulties. First, there must be serious restrictions on data collection. Second, is the CPRE distinguishing adequately between the banking and optioning of land? Third, what assumptions are being made about whether this land will ever be released through the planning system? Last but not least, is it accounting for the in-built tendency of housebuilders to exaggerate future supply, so as to inflate market impressions of the strength of their capital base?

If Jeremiah had been around today, he would have made the perfect chief executive of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England

The impression is left that both sides are exaggerating, so that one reaches a rather inadequate position that the truth probably lies somewhere in between. The only really reliable statistic is that land with at least outline consent will provide 278,866 homes. This equates to about a year and a half of the total we need which, even taking into account that other, smaller builders will get in on the act, does not seem particularly greedy.

In these circumstances, I am thrown back on common sense. Housebuilders are aghast that some Northern housing authorities have ruled out further greenfield supply for the foreseeable future. Actually, in the context of huge brownfield land availability, declining populations and low demand, I am inclined to back the CPRE on this one. By constraining expansion, regeneration might be accelerated, with relatively low risk of provoking a crisis even if the market is unable or unwilling to respond to the desired extent.

But in the housing growth areas I'm afraid that, from my perspective, the CPRE has cried wolf too many times. It has invoked a nimbyism that has contributed to the current crisis in affordable housing provision. The reality is that at least two-fifths of new housing in those areas needs to go on greenfield sites. We are unlikely to meet this target on the basis of sustainable neighbourhoods if every last hectare has to be wrung out grudgingly. I find the Town and Country Planning Association's preference for carefully planned new settlements and town extensions far more compelling. This will, of course, mean the South-east becomes more populated, but I believe this is a worthwhile price to pay for allowing the region to grow predictably and equitably.