Some months ago, a report by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) shocked environmentalists on the way it showed how England's rural idylls are vanishing due to urban sprawl and noise from planes, trains and cars.

The damning report said that whereas in the early 1960s only 26 per cent of the land was encroached by urban development, traffic and infrastructure, by the early 1990s, this had leapt to 41 per cent, and today it is an alarming 50 per cent of all land in England.

Every year, 320 square miles of countryside are affected, and campaigners are saying that the situation can only get worse under radical new government proposals to speed up approval for "nationally significant infrastructure projects".

The CPRE are arguing that this reform will strip away the public's right to say what it thinks of such projects. They insist that the countryside is one of their greatest national assets and unless the government acts, much of it will be a distant memory in their children's lifetimes.

The CPRE says that up to 25 miles of greenfield land is developed every year. New roads, power plants and airports slice through undisturbed landscapes, shattering their calm and disrupting habitats and wild life. Hundreds of homes are threatened with demolition, while tens of thousands more are affected by constant noise.

Now, does not all this ring a bell in Malta? We are also going through exaggerated development in almost every bit of space where one can built a block of flats, a supermarket, a showroom, a factory or any other business concern that makes money.

So far, we have not managed to balance the development with the preservation of the countryside.

We read regularly about Mepa's scheduling of buildings, monuments and other features. It would be interesting and an eye-opener if they had to publish (if they haven't done so already) a report about how encroachment on our countryside has developed over the years.

Surely the result is catastrophic! One can with one's own eyes see how large tracts of land were swallowed up by developers to replace the scenic beauty with ugly concrete blocks.

But I'm not aware that the Mepa has released any similar report to that of CPRE, about the percentage of lost countryside in the last 50 years.

In England, a reporter of a daily asked why a quiet spot in the country was hard to find. Would I be exaggerating if I had to ask the same question here?