DR Peter Addyman of York Civic Trust raises concerns about huge student accommodation blocks changing the character of this city (The Press, September 21), but he does not identify why developers bring forward these schemes as opposed to conventional housing for the wider population.

The answer is that ridiculous planning policies force house-builders to hand over to social landlords (at a financial loss) a substantial portion of any houses or flats they create, but impose no such burdens on student homes.

Who can blame developers faced with this nonsense?

The sooner affordable housing blackmail is abandoned altogether and the government again builds its own social housing, the sooner we will see annual housebuilding numbers return to where they used to be before 1997.

Matthew Laverack, Lord Mayors Walk, York

 

WHAT a rumpus regarding Kelly McCarthy being appointed as Shadow Environment Secretary.

The Conservatives have her equivalent in Liz Truss. She is a vegetarian, so Kelly McCarthy is one step on as a vegan.

Liz Truss’s predecessor was too efficient for civil servant advisors so they had him moved on.

Farming and prices are at a critical and crisis stage with prices at an all-time low. £100 per ton for soft biscuit wheat offered at the moment begs the question: how many packets of biscuits will be produced out of one ton alone?

We hear some of the public say farmers have flash vehicles, but you can hardly pull a trailer with 22 pigs weighing three and a half tons with a Del Boy three-wheeler, can you?

Pamela Frankland, Hull Road, Dunnington, York