The Regional Planning Guidance for the South East, recently published by the Government, calls for 39,000 new houses each year.

What is more, it makes provision for an increase in housing numbers after five years.

Counties in the South East are now required to decide on where these new houses are to be built.

It is widely accepted the south east is already crowded, with attendant traffic congestion, packed classrooms, overstretched hospitals and house prices rising to the point where ordinary people cannot afford to buy or rent.

Who are these new people who are to live in the South-East? They are not residents - our total birth rate is slightly less than our death rate, so we do not require more houses for home-grown families.

The migrants coming into the South-East are from other parts of England and from Scotland, Ireland, Asia, Africa, the West Indies and mainland Europe. It matters not whence they come - they just keep on coming.

Yet the North East and the North West of England have a declining population and empty houses by the street.

How is it government planners and our elected representatives in Westminster fail to see what is happening and do anything positive about it?

For many years now, London has been successful in despatching businesses and the people that work in them to other parts of the country. It is high time the South East followed this example.

-Richard Allden, Council for the Protection of Rural England