Housing plea is a timely one

Your campaign against unreasonable government housing policy is timely and important.

Current planning legislation poses the single greatest threat to the integrity of our countryside. Recent warm words from government about prioritising brownfield development have not been followed by action.

Centrally dictated, unrealistic housing targets continue to offer speculative developers an open goal in the countryside – even as open land becomes more vital in addressing the climate and biodiversity crisis.

With more than a million houses given planning permission in England over the last decade still unbuilt, no rational case can be made that this freefor-all has anything to do with housing need.

Planning law should be recast; councils should be in charge of the pragmatic decisions that best suit their localities.

It is important that residents contact their MPs in sufficient numbers that our elected representatives will not be able to overlook the level of public feeling. GIL KENNEDY Chairman, Lindfield Preservation Society, Dukes Road, Lindfield