The Government is "out of touch" with rural communities because ministers want to charge £1,000 to register village greens, critics say.

Opponents argue the proposal will leave cherished green spaces at the mercy of developers as the fee will deter preservation societies.

But the Government says registration, which protects village greens from the bulldozers, is a drain on council resources and has been exploited to stop building on industrial land such as disused railway lines.

Roberta Blackman-Woods, Labour's Shadow Planning Minister, said: "The Tory-led Government's plan to charge villages a grand to register their village green shows how out of touch they are with rural communities.

"This is crazy politics and a crazy policy. When village churches are struggling to deal with metal theft and rural pubs are calling time up and down the country, it simply doesn't make sense to charge communities to protect land that is of huge social and recreational importance."

She added: "These reforms put our countryside at risk while not helping get the homes built that we so desperately need. This is yet another example of a Government that is complacent about the huge damage that their plans will cause." The fee was part of the Government's public consultation on reform of village green regulations which closed in the autumn. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will respond formally to the consultation later this year.

A Defra spokesman said: "In total, local authorities have spent over £1 million a year in legal fees for village green applications – on top of their own processing costs.

"In order to recover a fraction of this spend, we have suggested that applicants should pay a fee, set by their local authority, which should not exceed £1,000. The fee will also help to ensure that only genuine applications to protect green spaces are made."

She added: "The current system has seen local authorities' time and money wasted on applications for council offices and disused railway lines to be classified as village greens."

The department argues that sites in registration applications include a beach, a churchyard, part of a golf course and former council offices.

The Torbay Civic Society has applied to register the seafront Torre Abbey public gardens as a village green to prevent any more commercial uses being allowed on the prime seafront land.