SIR - If Mike Priestley is to be believed (T&A, June 10), new houses take baths, flush toilets and drink tea.

He thinks they also need additional schools, doctors and policemen which, he claims, the Government, in its mad urge to cover our green and pleasant land in concrete, has completely overlooked.

It is also flawed logic to suggest building more houses creates more people, so the challenge is not to increase the supply of public services overall but how to relocate them to where new homes are being built.

Typical that Mr Priestley uses his misunderstanding to mount another attack on John Prescott because the demand for a million more homes came not from chaotic departmental guesswork but from the Joseph Rowntree Trust report on Future Housing Needs.

This is now the reference point for all government policy on house-building and was researched by my brother, Dr Alan Holmans, of Cambridge University.

He was, until he retired, chief government adviser on public housing policy and found that without any increase in overall population, many more homes will be needed to accommodate the fragmented nature of modern family life.

His main conclusion is to state the obvious: with fewer people living together the house-building industry - with government support - must find ways to allow them to live apart which inevitably means more houses.

Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley.