OVER the years articles and letters have appeared in your press on the need for homes for our residents (One in four is a second home February 21).

The headlines have been under different guises but the same message is expressed - the need to house our own residents.

Now suddenly, as is often the case, councillor Gill Taylor highlights this very problem.

The only people to gain from the ownership of second homes are the inland revenue via stamp duty, a total of £27 million for Weymouth Portland and West Dorset, and not forgetting the house builders, etc. who promise to put affordable housing as part of the build, then after permission is granted, suddenly can’t sustain this commitment.

I wonder what ‘affordable housing’ means, as someone, somewhere, can afford to buy the house therefore in the true sense it is affordable?

I note with interest the new houses mushrooming around Dorchester.

We have retirement flats that are mainly occupied by incomers from various areas of the country, similarly we have those wishing to escape and purchase the dream of living on Duchy land where there appears to be a large turn over of properties.

Those that are “affordable” are rented properties purchased by various housing associations, which charge a rent that is often made up with benefits.

What the council needs to bear in mind when granting planning permission is that building on farm, green and brown land sites can only be sustained for so long.

Then suddenly we will wake up - as I have, to having to wait for medical provision that is lacking, farm produce that becomes expensive because it has to be imported, because the land is under concrete.

Also those new residents want the same urban facilities that they were used to but aren’t available here.

The shops, banks etc, communities that aren’t available partly because some homes may be lived in for a week or so a year or are rented out as holiday lets.

Let’s not go down the road of blame, this I see everyday with the elders and so called betters fighting out Brexit and other issues in Parliament . Just remember why you decided to stand for council why you work for the council in various departments and for the electorate for once to have value for money and not as now heart attacks etc because you have an eureka moment

Heather Robinson

Dorchester