The green belt between Oxford and Abingdon is under threat as the Government increases pressure on councils to find sites for new homes.

A review of Oxfordshire's structure plan is to be published next week and it warns that the area may have to be sacrificed to save the character of the county's market towns and villages.

The Government wants to see 2,430 houses built in the county every year between now and 2006.

The review says that accommodating this level of housing will require greenfield development, because of the shortage of vacant and derelict land in towns.

The report, entitled Oxfordshire: Planning Our Future, says the options are: Continued expansion of Banbury, Bicester, Didcot and Witney.

Major development on the edge of Oxford and Abingdon.

Expansion of the smaller towns of Carterton, Chipping Norton, Faringdon, Henley, Thame, Wallingford, Wantage and Grove.

The existing structure plan provides for 35,500 new homes by 2011, but the Government wants to see an extra 12,650 houses.

To establish the absolute capacity of larger towns, a study with district councils is now under way. Margaret Preston, of the Oxfordshire branch of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, said the county was being put in an impossible position.

Mrs Preston said: "Because of the lack of urban brownfield sites in Oxfordshire, it is impossible to meet the Government target of 50 per cent of all new development on such land.

"If the new level of housing proposed is inflicted on Oxfordshire, this will inevitably lead to damaging development on greenfield sites."

The report suggests that some towns are already seeing building on land with "high landscape value" and warns that a new town may have to be created to make up for the housing shortfall. It insists that even after taking into account Oxfordshire's potential urban capacity and the number of houses already planned for and being built on small "windfall" sites in rural areas, land for about 7,000 houses still needs to be found.

The public is now being invited to comment on the options facing the county in a consultation exercise.