Boris has said “ Build Build Build “to get us out of this economic contraction.

Here in Herefordshire new home building is on Stop Stop Stop simply because of our failure to police the river polluters.

Thousands of jobs are being lost in the construction industry with no work for electricians, plumbers, plasterers tilers bricklayers et al.

However, the elephant in the room is the filthy agricultural businesses who are polluting our rivers with phosphate run off from the plethora of outside chicken ranches coupled with anaerobic digesters spreading leachate and the industrial extraction of water for soft fruit production draining the water table and yet no moratorium on any of them.

Is cheap chicken, or strawberries at Christmas, more important than homes to live in?

We have sewage works in villages that through lack of investment pour phosphate into our streams.

There are thousands of unregulated old septic tanks in the county unfit for purpose that need replacement.

Everyone is responsible and yet the construction industry is being held to ransom.

Our MP in the north is backing the farming lobby so no help from him and the MP from the south wishes to be kept up to speed on the situation so not much from Westminster.

This requires more than a few tick boxes for so called “wetland areas”.

We desperately need an èminence grise to intervene.

Jeffrey J Hancorn
Hereford