READING Councillor Beesley's letter on the local housing issue (27th Dec) I thought he must be joking. Or there's been a misprint.

But no the facts he states stand. "22 affordable homes built in Bournemouth in 2017/18" in the face of a waiting list of "4,000". And that is 4,000 following council wiping thousands off the register three years ago as their prospect of finding council property was "not realistic".

This then showing the utter bankruptcy of UK collapsed housing policy. Despair and hopelessness for millions desperate for "affordable homes". But then there are reasons, and very clear reasons.

Thirty years ago mid-1980s a three-bedroom house in our towns was four times average earnings. A semi for £32,000 with average income of £8K. Now the figure is over 12 times average earnings: £260K semi with incomes around £22K.

And this the consequence of the insanity of running national housing on market policies. Housing endlessly inflating to feed money markets.

And add to this in our towns tens of thousands of retired people staying put in family homes all but for the exhaustion and enormous cost of moving. Or the absence of suitable down-sizing flats.

We need a mix of homes for all stages of life. We need to radically modernise the horrendous buying and selling markets. It has to be made far more straight-forward.

Brexiteers tell us we are taking our country back. A very good start would then be decoupling UK housing from global markets.

"Affordable" in the end is the aftermath of "market driven". An equitable housing market, as run by local authorities up to the 1970s, would be central and local government funded with mortgage rates no higher than 1%. You then end uncontrollable housing inflation and property profiteering.

JEFF WILLIAMS

Jubilee Road, Parkstone, Poole