Housing needs will not be met while developers make profit top priority
SIR – I live in a wealthy rural area, where more homes should be built. I could not possibly afford my present house if I went back to being a 30-year-old, and I know full well that we need cheaper starter homes.
At Ponteland we have a previously used site which has outline planning permission for 273 detached and semi-detached dwellings. Rather than rushing forward to build affordable homes, however, developers are instead putting in other planning applications for over 2,500 houses – all on the Green Belt and nearly all upmarket.
Builders should comply with the objectively assessed housing needs of local authorities. Right now they are fixated on maximising their profits. Philip Ham
Chairman, Ponteland Civic Society Ponteland, Northumberland
SIR – Allister Heath’s call for a housebuilding drive (Comment, July 6) has some good principles. I am sure most would agree that we need the right kind of land-use system, more high-quality family homes, and great communities that people want to live in.
However, these will not be delivered by simply forcing councils to release more land for development in areas of high demand. Councils are already allocating increasing amounts of land for housing, often on protected countryside cherished by communities. The houses being built remain largely unaffordable to local people. Communities are keen to help plan for local development, but they can also see that we are suffering from a shortage of genuinely affordable homes for young families.
It will be difficult to meet the great variety of housing needs. To do it, we need to focus on type and tenure and delivery, not just supply and demand. Matt Thomson
Head of planning, Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)
London SE1
SIR – Another sad feature that has fuelled demand for housing is the rise in the number of divorces or separations.
I know one couple with two children who had one house with three bedrooms. Now divorced and sharing custody, between them they have two houses and five bedrooms. Sue Milne
Northampton
SIR – For the past two years I have been visiting a small town near Aachen in western Germany. It is very family-friendly and there are many small blocks of flats (about four storeys high) where people seem to live very happily. Some recently built flats have fenced community gardens, often with children’s play equipment. There are also plenty of general play areas.
The same sort of arrangement could easily work here. You could get a number of families within a single dwelling in a more intimate, friendly arrangement than one finds in vast, impersonal tower blocks. Jacqueline Manners
Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire