LETTERS: We can't keep building homes on Harrogate's greenfield sites

The housing crisis has been with us since at least the end of the war when the target was to build 300,000 houses per year as ‘Homes fit for Heroes’, but that was never achieved.

The only solution to the housing crisis is a stable population. We cannot for ever go on building on green field sites as is happening in Harrogate at present. In the end the Local Plan will go bust.

In the short term that outcome can be delayed by vastly increasing the housing density of new builds, building flats and terraced houses which are not as land hungry as detached and semidetached houses, but that demands a hard line from planning authorities, an unlikely event.

While talking of climate change let us not lose sight of the fact that in four year’s time all new housing has to be carbon neutral and gas boilers have to be largely phased out in 12 year’s time.

I hope developers and purchasers of new houses remember this. Yes, our Local Plan might be fine for today but it is certainly unfit as a template for the future.