Sir, I write in support of Helen Marshall as another barmy idea is trotted out that the Green Belt is not fit for purpose.

The facts that the Vale housing plan are based on (the Strategic Housing Market Assessment) are wholly discredited, and evidence suggests that the houses proposed are not for local people at all but for economic migrants and people pushed out of London by price, benefit reform and the bedroom tax.

Secondly, there are a million empty homes in this country and some of them are here. Surely the compulsory purchase of even a quarter of that figure, along with the use of brownfield sites, is better than the destruction of Green Belt just to build yet more “ticky tacky boxes”, to quote Private Eye this month The whole point of the Green Belt is to keep Britain a green and pleasant land, and what really riles is that there are imaginative alternatives, like flats above shops, redevelopments of town centres, brown field sites and empty houses that could be used. But no, let’s cover the Vale in concrete. The countryside and the Green Belt matter and I, for one, will fight for it.

Mark Fysh

Whitecross

Abingdon