Retail park housing and green-belt land

Sir, Given the changing nature of the retail sector and the demise of hypermarkets, should the supermarkets not be encouraged to divest themselves of the land banks they hold? This land could then be used for housing development.

Jean Burtonwood

Huddersfield, W Yorks

Sir, Melanie Vitow (letter, Dec 16) sees the possibility of developing town centre property into new housing when it becomes economically underused.

By the same token, I have often been in the countryside looking at a thistle-strewn field that can support only a couple of ponies and gives no employment to anyone. Would not that field be better used for new housing so that the local village has enough children and young people to support a school, shops and village life?

Neil Lawson-May

London NW3

Sir, Further to your report “Councils offered huge ‘bribes’ to build homes on green belt” (Dec 13, and letters, Dec 15), there is no need to damage green-belt land for the expansion of cities.

In the case of London, its existing build density is low compared with other capital cities and there is so much brownfield land that all new housing could be built within its boundaries, and without the need for tall buildings. The Prince’s Foundation for Building Community has made the suggestion that new housing need be only between six and eight storeys, like the existing Edwardian mansion blocks which do not blight protected views. Indeed, adding just one floor to existing residential development in London would secure housing for current requirements.

It is a question of setting out these requirements with rules about tall buildings in a robust plan for London and other cities. Erosion of green-belt land can never be justified on environmental grounds, and it should not be justifiable on planning grounds either.

Anthony Jennings

London WC1

Sir, Much has been written about the building of homes on the green belt. Would the landscape of our country really be damaged if, say, the 50 yards starting at the boundary of every village were to be released for housing? This would amount to an area of at least 30 acres, assuming the village “footprint” is a circle of a mile in diameter. This additional housing would not change the character of our green belt and yet would provide much-needed housing stock.

Andrew Frangou

Windlesham, Surrey

POTTER’S LAKES

Sir, In response to your article “Beatrix Potter would fight National Trust, biographer claims” (news, Dec 16), let me reassure you that the National Trust remains fully committed to Potter’s legacy in the Lake District.

We are rooted in the fabric of the Lakes and are actively working for the long-term success of upland hill farming. In partnership with our 54 fell farm tenants, we are managing a flock of 21,000 Herdwick sheep, the breed so beloved by Potter. Herdwicks will continue to graze the land that we recently purchased in Borrowdale.

The suggestion in your article that the Trust split land from the farm at Thorneythwaite is wrong — that was done by the vendor. We bought the land with Potter’s original vision very much in mind — a landscape where thriving livestock farmers, world-class natural environment and gobsmacking beauty seamlessly coexist.

Patrick Begg
Rural enterprises director at National Trust

PADDINGTON PLANS

Sir, Westminster used to be a model of enlightened planning, conservation and design policies, but the recent decision on the Paddington Cube — the redevelopment of the former Royal Mail Sorting office — shows a disregard of the borough’s conservation area policies.

If a 14-storey mega block in a historic streetscape next to Brunel’s magnificent Grade I listed Paddington station can be waved through, what is the use of so-called conservation areas?

The chairman of the planning committee spoke out in favour of these proposals before public comments had been made, and in my view objections from Historic England as well as the London Ambulance Service and others were brushed aside at the discussion.

This is a case where the secretary of state must hold a public inquiry at which these contentious proposals can be fully examined, tested and challenged.

Henrietta Billings

Director, SAVE Britain’s Heritage

BRUSHING UP SKILLS

Sir, With regard to your report “Teach brushing teeth, schools told” (news, Dec 16, and letter, Dec 17), I remember a dentist visited our primary school in the 1970s and gave us red disclosing tablets to stain our teeth, and tips on brushing and diet.

Now a dentist myself, I see more and more of the under-fives with decayed deciduous teeth, which could have been avoided. Bearing in mind that many school-age children are not taken to the dentist at all, surely basic oral healthcare delivered by dental professionals a couple of times a year in a school setting is common sense, and in the long run could save the NHS thousands of pounds. More importantly, it could stop children suffering from a painful disease.

Mike O’Reilly

Prestbury, Cheshire

Sir, The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is suggesting that schools be responsible for teaching children to brush their teeth.

Teachers have become used to undertaking the responsibilities of child-rearing that were once the preserve of the parent, although I suspect they will draw the line at copulation and childbirth. The trend is clear. Child-rearing is best left to schools, leaving parents time to provide the national curriculum through out-of-school tuition.

Bill Dalton

London SE5

GRADING UP

Sir, Tom Bennett (Thunderer, Dec 17) criticises Bristol University for accepting poorer students on lower grades. While he is right not to want to patronise students, he is wrong to assume that without such radical measures we can address an access gap at our best universities revealed last week to be tenfold between the richest and poorest students.

Such contextual policies are not enough. Students need better advice on subject choices; comprehensives must do more to stretch their able students; and summer schools for sixth-formers like those we run with Bristol and other leading universities can encourage students to fulfil their academic potential.

However, Bristol is to be commended for recognising how much harder it can be to get good grades at a tough inner-city school than in a fee-paying independent. That must be part of the mix.

Sir Peter Lampl

Founder and chairman, Sutton Trust; chairman, Education Endowment Foundation

Sir, Tom Bennett misses the point. The issue is not aspiration, but the support needed to realise it. As an admissions tutor at Bristol University in the 1960s I frequently adjusted the grade requirement to reflect a candidate’s schooling after I discovered that a school had no physics teacher with a degree in the subject (a typical situation then which does much to explain the situation today). I see nothing patronising about this.

Dr David Brancher

Abergavenny, Wales

POETIC PIGEONS

Sir, Neil Sewell-Rutter (letter, Dec 15) may be right about the “complacent and well-fed city pigeon” being non-inspirers of impressive poetry, but not all urban pigeons are so comfortably situated as to be poetically non-starters. What about Philip Larkin’s miserable specimens “on shallow slates . . . backing against a thin rain from the west / Blown across each sunk head”? Is this not an image to rival the beautiful sparrow image that Mr Sewell-Rutter quotes from Psalm 102?

Elisabeth Brooke

Enfield, Middx

Sir, If you saw my weekly bill for bird seed you would know where all the London sparrows have gone. They’re in my garden.

The Rev Michael Turner

Salisbury

LOSING A FORTUNE

Sir, It is right to condemn Camelot for giving £2.5 million to a fraudulent claimant, so depriving good causes (news, Dec 17). Yet it seems bizarre that the punishment will deprive those causes of a further £3 million.

Sir Jeremy Elwes

Sevenoaks, Kent

FRENCH KNOT

Sir, On a recent school exchange to Paris I watched a teacher take 30 minutes to do a maths problem (differentiating an exponential function) that in England takes ten seconds. The only surprise about the French being bottom in maths is that they aren’t even lower.

Nick MacKinnon

Winchester College

CLIMATE-RELATED FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE

Sir, In the light of the Paris climate agreement, we the undersigned legislators recognise that many assets related to a carbon-intensive economy may be mispriced and present a financial risk as a “stranded asset”.

Investors require a comprehensive and transparent disclosure of these risks by companies and markets. This means consistent, comparable and reliable measurement and assessment. We welcome the leadership being shown by the task force on climate-related financial disclosures. It is critical that adequate risk reporting is standardised across the world’s stock exchanges.

To that end, we have written to the world’s stock exchanges urging them to adopt climate-related reporting guidance and disclosure for all listed companies. They should commit to implement best international practice for disclosing sustainability and climate-related risks, and ensure that progress in reporting is transparently monitored and easily accessible to all stakeholders.

Ed Miliband MP; Lord Prescott; Barry GardinerMP; US Senator Ed Markey; Stephen Kinnock MP; Lisa Nandy MP; Graham Stuart MP; Caroline Lucas MP; Mike Weir MP; Jeremy Lefroy MP; Clive Lewis MP; Caroline Flint MP; Helen Goodman MP; Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece; Lord Robin Teverson; Stephen Twigg MP; Alan Whitehead MP; Angela Rayner MP; Rebecca Long Bailey MP; Liam Byrne MP; Liz Kendall MP; Alison Mcgovern MP; Jamie Reed MP; Geoffrey Robinson MP; Nick Thomas-Symonds MP; Stephen Timms MP; Jonathan Reynolds MP; Maria Eagle MP; George Howarth MP; Albert Owen MP; Drew Hendry MP; Roger Mullin MP; Barry Sheerman MP; Andy Slaughter MP; Peter Dowd MP; Jon Ashworth MP; Rupa Huq MP; Louise Haigh MP; John Mann MP; Khalid Mahmood MP; Nahim Razzaq, Bangladesh; Nassirou Bako-Arifari, Benin; Senadora Venessa Grazziotin, Brazil; Senadora Lídice Da Mata, Brazil; Jorge Viana, Brazil; Thèodore Datouo, Cameroon; Marguerite Dissake née Ekoka, Cameroon; Albert Dooh Collins, Cameroon; Aissa H. Douvaouissa, Cameroon; Banmi Emmanual Dinga, Cameroon; Laure-Pauline Fotso, Cameroon; Mariam Goni, Cameroon; Joseph Roland Matta, Cameroon; Martin Oyono, Cameroon; Haman Paul, Cameroon; Ndam Njoya Tomaino, Cameroon; Jean Jacques Zam, Cameroon; Patricio Vallespin Lopez, Chile; Andrea Molina Oliva, Chile; Magister Abelino Esquivel Quesada, Costa Rica; Oscar Ledesma Zamora, Ecuador; Alemayehu Tegenu, Ethiopia; Satu Hassi, Finland; Joelle Garriaud-Maylam, France; Martine lIgnières-Cassou, France; Annalena Baerbock, Germany; Bärbel Höhn, Germany; Gerhard Schick, Germany; Simon Edem Asimah, Ghana; Eva Kaili, Greece; Schmuck Erzsébet, Hungary; István Józsa, Hungary; Stella Bianchi, Italy; Francesco Boccia, Italy; Marco Causi, Italy; Erica D’Adda, Italy; Silvia Fregolent, Italy; Giampaolo Galli, Italy; Alberto Giorgetti, Italy; Mauro Guerra, Italy; Paolo Guerrieri Paleotti, Italy; Yoram Gutgeld, Italy; Maino Marchi, Italy; Claudio Martini, Italy; Antonio Misiani, Italy; Barbara Saltamartini, Italy; Bruno Tabacci, Italy; Walter Tocci, Italy; Tomoko Abe, Japan; Tetsuro Fukuyama, Japan; Susumu Hamamura, Japan; Yuriko Koike, Japan; Takashi Kosugi, Japan; Takeshi Maeda, Japan; Hideki Makihara, Japan; Hiroyuki Nagahama, Japan; Masahuru Nakagawa, Japan; Hideki Niizuma, Japan; Tetsuo Saito, Japan; Keisuke Suzuki, Japan; Michiyo Takagi, Japan; Shinako Tsuchiya, Japan; Kaneshige Wakamatsu, Japan; Kenji Yamada, Japan; Kozo Yamamoto, Japan; Shinichi Yokoyama, Japan; Yumi Yoshikawa, Japan; Masayoshi Yoshino, Japan; Samir Murad, Jordan; Wafa Bani Mustafa, Jordan; Billow Kerrow, Kenya; Alain Aoun, Lebanon; Ali Ahmad Bazzi, Lebanon; Henri Helou, Lebanon; Yassine Jaber, Lebanon; Mohammad Kabbani, Lebanon; Atef Majdalani, Lebanon; Ghassan Moukheiber, Lebanon; Ali Osseiran, Lebanon; Serge Torsarkissian, Lebanon; Abdellatif Zein, Lebanon; Edward Dagoseh, Liberia; Ignacio Pichardo, Mexico; Me Salima Faraji, Morocco; Bas Eickhout, Netherlands; Bukar Abba Ibrahim, Nigeria; Ola Elvestuen, Norway; Armando Villanueva Mercado, Peru; Lucie Cissé, Senegal; Mamadou Lamine Thiam, Senegal; Papa Biram Toure, Senegal; Carles Campuzano, Spain; Sujeewa Senasinghe, Sri Lanka; Jitu V Soni, Tanzania; Samba Jallow, The Gambia; Ekanya Geofrey, Uganda; Violet Akurut Adome, Uganda; Yeri Ofwono Apollo, Uganda; Atim-Ogwal Cecilia Barbara, Uganda; Ajilo Maria Goretti Elogu, Uganda; Lamwaka Margaret, Uganda; Morris Ogenga Latigo, Uganda; Biyika Lawrence Songa, Uganda; Matt Cartwright, USA; Brian Schatz, USA