YOUR correspondents who challenge new housing developments in Hereford are right.

Herefordshire needs more and better-paid local work before any major speculative housing estates are built, whether in the city or in the surrounding countryside.

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The questions must be asked: Who is going to buy these houses?

Where are they going to earn the money to support mortgages or rent?

How are they going to get to work, do their shopping and use local services except by car?

At present salaries in Herefordshire are much lower than the English average; house prices are higher than average; and there are twice as many empty homes in the County as there are homeless people.

There is no demand to support the supply.

Moreover these houses on greenfield sites will permanently damage the biodiversity of the area - far more than a Hereford by-pass would do - and they will reduce the county’s chance of achieving carbon neutrality, even if they are fitted with heat exchangers, solar panels, Scandinavian-grade insulation and electric car charging points, all of which I doubt. 

When housing was a quid pro quo against Government funding for the Hereford bypass I could understand the attraction, even if I wasn’t happy with it; but now that we are not getting a bypass and Government policies have changed to become more environmentally aware, what is the rationale behind this massive house-building spree?  Jobs first, please, housing later. 

Julia Evans

Lyonshall

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