Readers respond to Polly Toynbee’s article about the tussle between central government and local planners in Kent

Polly Toynbee’s piece misses the central point about the housing crisis (In Kent, Labour has a fight on its hands – and a make-or-break test for its housing revolution, 19 November). It is a crisis of affordability, not supply, brought about by the over-financialisation of the stock through a decade and a half of interest rates close to zero.

Prices rose from three or four times average earnings to more than nine times as investors shifted cash from deposits to bricks and mortar. No arbitrary housing targets will ever correct that because simple arithmetic is against it, never mind that developers won’t increase supply to the point where they have to drop prices. And the threat of rescinding unbuilt planning consents would see material starts, so that forfeiture would leave a mess for early buyers to live with, and someone else to sort out.