Environment campaigners claim today that some of England's finest landscapes are threatened by quarry operators with the legal right to dig on vast tracts of land.
The Council for the Protection of Rural England says county council and national park planners are being held over a barrel by quarry owners who have permission to extract far more material than is needed for house or road building.
The CPRE says research shows that the industry has enough land banks to build more than 112m homes or 85,000 miles of motorway.
Operators can quarry 6bn tonnes of aggregates (sand, gravel and crushed rock).
"The government needs to take urgent action to reduce these land banks," said Henry Oliver, the CPRE's quarrying specialist. "They are a timebomb ticking at the heart of some of our finest landscapes."
Last week planners in the Peak District national park reached a deal to protect Stan ton moor, an ancient upland tract dotted with bronze age stone circles and other monuments. It has not satisfied local residents or eco-campaigners.
A quarrying company can extract more on the edge of the moor in return for giving up its permissions on two other sites, one close to the Nine Ladies stone circle. It has also agreed to build a road to keep traffic away from villages, and to limit lorry movements to 10 a day.
In last year's budget Gordon Brown, the chancellor, announced his intention to introduce an aggregates levy.
But Mr Oliver said ministers' good intentions to protect the countryside and communities from unnecessary quarrying could be "fatally undermined if they fail to get a grip on this problem".
• Jail sentences of up to two years and £5,000 fines are among penalties that came into force yesterday for people who endanger wildlife.
The Countryside and Rights of Way Act also allows horse riders and ramblers to use pathways more easily.
