Regarding B C Baker's letter about the Allaston development and its downside. It talks of more sensitive ways of providing housing. There is no sensitive way.

The houses have to go somewhere and no matter where they are erected there will be more congestion and loss of agricultural land.

In the next 20 years the UK will need 10 more Birminghams' worth of houses. The "I don't want houses near my house" attitude will have to go. While we make the decision to keep having more babies than the replacement level of two it would not matter if we had zero immigration. We are going to need a whole lot more houses. As we stand we could feed about a third of our population.

In a letter to our government about food security, overcrowded streets and schools etc, their reply was that we are a trading nation so we can rely on the rest of the world to grow our food.

What exactly do we have to trade? People – but wait the rest of the world has plenty of those already. I find this whole situation very worrying and know that the least of people's concerns in the years to come will be if there is a house next door.

– C. Davies, Broadwell.