• BARRY Edwards (How to build the homes we need, January 29), is right to highlight the absence of funding for councils to build housing (cut off by Margaret Thatcher and not reinstated during the Tony Blair-Gordon Brown years), but the solution cannot be to hunt round for green patches on existing estates to build on because they are free, while selling off 33 per cent of the product (as will be the case at Dixon Clark Court) to fund construction of the rest.

The amenities of the 60 existing flats on the site will be severely compromised to gain an extra 25 affordable units which, it has to be faced, will make very little impact on the oft-repeated total of 14,000 presently on the waiting list.

To squeeze the extra units on to the site requires some bizarre design, and many will be heavily overshadowed by the existing tower.

There is no question that consent would be given to build the tower in the midst of the proposed new housing if that already existed, but the council is ready to grant itself consent to achieve the same result in reverse order.

The surfaces to be built on are by no means mostly car parking but include the contentious trees and a formerly charming garden.

I submit that the Labour Party should work out a proper strategy for meeting the housing need on a sufficient scale and without nibbling at the amenities of existing housing.

JAMES DUNNETT
James Dunnett Architects
Barnsbury Road, N1