Dear Editor, Mike Brown (Post 16 April) is right to say we need to address the affordable housing needs of the region and that we cannot ignore the many people who are priced out of market housing. But he is wrong to take at face value the Government’s ideologically-driven 20-year predictions. 

If we concentrate on the housing that we know we need now for real people on actual waiting lists we should be able to provide most of the housing on brownfield land and also protect valuable areas of countryside. There will be plenty of opportunity to revisit the figures as we review regional plans over the next 20 years.

If we artificially inflate the figures for notional predictions which rely on all sorts of imponderables all we will do is allow developers to cherry pick greenfield sites and leave contaminated urban land until last.

But it’s not just about the housing numbers game, funding for social housing is vital, particularly in rural areas, and the Government and local authorities need to put all the mechanisms in place to ensure however many houses we build they are affordable for the people who need them.

Gerald Kells

Regional Policy Officer

Campaign to Protect Rural England

Dear Editor, Could a member of the public point out to the Cabinet Member for Regeneration the fact that there is little point in creating new conservation areas when the existing ones are so badly served at the moment that one now relies upon a visit from the anti graffiti squad whilst the residents do as they please.

Others have been a conservation area for nearly two months, and not one resident has yet been informed and another one is being desecrated by lack of vigilance or back up from the very officers who are paid to do so. 

Extending the protection of other areas, buildings and sites is a good idea but, as anyone knows, it is not the good ideas which work it is, like a good marriage, the maintenance thereof...

And some of the existing ‘marriages’ became divorces long ago.

Mrs A Yorke

Chairman Technical Committee

The Harborne Society

Harborne

Birmingham