WHEN Margaret Thatcher sold off two million council houses she ignored Nigel Lawson’s advice to reinvest half of the revenue back into new council homes.

This encouraged bulk purchase of properties by wealthy private landlords. Together with a restrictive green-belt policy and speculative landowners sitting on untaxed vacant land, this controlled the housing supply through greed.

The rush to brownfield development in towns and cities causes over-population by high housing density and unproductive office space increasing city pollution and congestion.

Rather than over-build in cities, we should release green-belt land for intelligent and thoughtful creation of small new housing developments (by the people for the people and certainly not influenced by arty architects and unimaginative councillors).

We need housing to fit into the countryside with planning reinvigorated by learning from our nation’s historical attractive successes and not by constructing soulless often rabbit-hutch glass-and-concrete conurbations.

Cities that are blighted by urban sprawl should be redeveloped by division into smaller hamlets and towns separated by healthy green land-corridors.

Land Tax on empty land would discourage housing price bubbles and begin to redress the growing inequality caused by undemocratic oligarchy.

Tom Scaife, Manor Drive, York.