WE HOPE that a new prime minister and cabinet will quickly address the disastrous rape of the country’s green belt currently taking place up and down this land.

Councils are being pressurised to build mass developments with scant regard for the preservation of rural communities, increased flood risk and inevitable traffic chaos.

Precious farmland is being concreted over by the minute, as a consequence of which the UK is producing less of its own food and importing more by air, road and sea with tragic consequences for the environment and global warming.

Brexit must mean that population and housing need forecasts should be recalculated yet mass housing developments now and into the future continue unabated.

Politicians seem incapable of thinking laterally.

Why not give incentive tax breaks to singletons and couples occupying large houses to either downsize or convert their properties to produce additional living units?

Literally tens of thousands of homes would be made available with minimal environmental damage.

Far too simple an idea for politicians to grasp it seems.

Instead we remain obsessed with the idea that new properties must be built where none existed before. A madness fuelled by incompetent politicians, greedy landowners and avaricious developers.

ROBIN SEQUEIRA

New Road, Lytchett Minster

(Editor’s note: Mr Sequeira is a former director of social services, Dorset County Council)

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