Save the bungalow

SIR – MPS and peers have suggested that more bungalows are needed to cater for Britain’s ageing population (report, April 30).

It will be pointless building bungalows if planning departments continue to allow purchasers to upgrade them into two-storey residences. A bungalow’s single-storey status should be protected in law.

Virtually all the suitable bungalows in our area have been converted into two-storey mansions. Local people who want to downsize but stay near their families now have no suitable accommodation to buy. Wendy Strathdee

Burnham, Buckinghamshire

SIR – Not content with telling older people to downsize, Lord Best, the chairman of the All-party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People, now wants them to live in bungalows built on “unused scraps of land”.

Unused scraps of land are usually that way for a reason. Margie Haynes

Colchester, Essex