MY STAUNCHLY socialist father, who brought up our family of seven in Tang Hall with modest means, and was for many years a shop steward at Rowntrees, will be turning in his grave over the profiteering that underpins York’s Labour administration’s attempts to make provision for affordable housing – set out in its much-vaunted and yet equally misguided Local Plan.

Who will gain in this piece? Not the council. Certainly not the residents. The developers? Well, maybe some. But their income pales into insignificance at the side of the profits the landowner classes, like the Queen’s cousin – who owns a large slice of Whinthorpe – stand to rake-in.

In the case of Earswick, the 220 acres of productive arable greenbelt land under attack is worth between £5,000 and £10,000 an acre – a total of £1 million to £2 million. But as soon as the plan is approved and the land is freed for development, it will jump to around £250,000 per acre.

That’s a 25-fold increase to a total of a cool £55 million for the site. And Earswick is only one of a dozen or so similar sites in the greenbelt around York that the council is intent on encroaching on for housing development.

Work it out for yourselves: that’s an income to landowners of around half-a-billion. Enough to dual the ring road, build a new council headquarters, upgrade all the squares in York, provide cycleways, Park & Rides, electric buses, new stadia.

What price socialism, eh?

Allan Charlesworth, Old Earswick, York.