Building more houses is all very well – but they must be the right kind
SIR – If, as you report (July 5), the Government is to impose yet another step change upwards in housebuilding, it should also introduce enforceable density targets to ensure that as little land as possible is lost and that the cheaper homes people actually need and can afford are built.
While England builds houses at 30 to the hectare or less – not least due to the misguided garden cities movement – eminently desirable areas like central Paris, Barcelona and even Islington are “compact cities” built at 75 or more.
Weaning developers off more profitable housing will be hard, but if they knew authorities had the power and duty to enforce higher densities, they would build the homes we need rather doing than nothing.
Imposition of higher building targets without density control will place authorities even more at developers’ mercy. They will have to agree to whatever developers want to build just to meet the numbers. Michael Tyce
Waterstock, Oxfordshire SIR – There is no point in building social housing in rural areas that are not served by a regular and reliable public transport system.
Cottage industries are now few in the countryside, and if those who are to be housed there do not have a car then they cannot get to their place of employment.
I hope the Government has taken this aspect of its plans into account. Christine Hartridge
Hambledon, Hampshire
SIR – William Hague (Comment, July 4) says that young people “face house prices bid up to impossible levels because of shortage of supply and permanently low interest rates”.
What about the demand caused by unfettered immigration? Duncan Reeve
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire
SIR – I agree with Sajid Javid on the housing crisis: all prime ministers, from Harold Wilson to David Cameron and now Theresa May, are guilty. All are guilty of the sin of omission, but one stands out as guilty of the sin of commission. Margaret Thatcher forbade, by law, councils to use the receipts from the sale of “their” housing stock to replace it.
The seeds of our current crisis were sown then. David Osen
Chigwell, Essex
SIR – We have just completed a development of 12 apartments on a town-centre site. Construction time was one year; obtaining planning consent took five years and three months. This was a brown-field site in a town, supposedly prioritised in government guidelines.
Another town-centre property we own has a roof space large enough to form two flats. However, we have been told that this cannot be considered due to the possibility of flooding. We are talking here of the second floor – and the area has no history of flooding. B A Maskell
Croyde, Devon