Sustainable housing

SIR – Allister Heath’s contention that more countryside should be given over to housing (Comment, June 15) carries with it an inevitable reduction in agriculturally productive land.

In 2015 the National Farmers’ Union expressed alarm that there had been a decline in our ability to feed the population from our own resources. The country’s self-sufficiency in home-grown food has dropped from 80 per cent in 1980 to 62 per cent, with a projected fall to 53 per cent by 2040.

With a rapidly expanding world population and the associated volatility of, and pressure on, world food markets, can such destruction of our countryside be countenanced?

David Abell Portsmouth, Hampshire

SIR – I live in central Buckinghamshire, where new housing estates are springing up all around us. The need to house our burgeoning population is accepted, but without commensurate infrastructure the country cannot cope. Last week, a three-mile journey across the market town of Wendover took more than 25 minutes.

Roads come first, houses second.

Anne Leeper

Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire