David Woollcombe points out the crucial need for infrastructure to be built alongside new homes. Plus letters from Dr Stephen Battersby, Tony Ingham and Martin Large

Your editorial’s conclusion (30 July) that Angela Rayner’s announcement of a new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was a “good start” failed to address the yawning policy gap that makes her announcement horribly flawed and misguided. The catastrophic failure of the housing market to meet current needs is not just economic or political – it is physical and environmental.

Last year, as a newly elected councillor in east Hertfordshire, I inherited plans to build 18,500 new homes in a district where there is simply not the water or sewage treatment infrastructure to supply existing homes, let alone the capacity to supply new ones. Building a house takes a few months, but building a reservoir or sewage treatment plant takes decades. But none of those new houses can be sold until such infrastructure is built and connected. And that infrastructure will cost far more than Thames Water is likely to be able to raise.