THOSE shouting most about the need for affordable housing are the ones who destroyed the only affordable housing that worked by flogging off council housing very cheaply. It was all political.

They didn’t have the guts or nous to do what was needed, which was charge rents that reflected income. In the 1980s, poor tenants in one and two bed flats were paying 20 per cent of their income more in rent thacn far wealthier tenants in three bed council houses with good gardens.

Another aspect of housing is land use and building euphemistically named garden villages all over, covering thousands of acres of water and carbon dioxide absorbing good agricultural land, proves that councils and governments talk about global warming but stick to old backward (and worse) actions.

Brexit and this pandemic should have shocked what our leaders have for brains to realise agricultural land and natural areas are more precious than ever.

Building thousands of expensive sprawling “village” mansions is so wrong today. The MP who has had his Bill to do something about untreated sewerage going into our waterways, after normal rainfall, rejected five times will find even more sewerage in streams and rivers because the drainage and treatment isn’t being increased.

C Davison, Billingham.