SIR — The proposals for housing policy in the Exmoor National Park Draft Plan seek to link two separate issues, the need for social "affordable" housing and the proliferation of second homes, some of which may arguably be used in a way that has a negative local impact.

In doing, so, they risk hamstringing an important debate in a welter of "them and us" histrionics.

House price inflation is a national issue and Exmoor is by no means the only area where first-time buyers need very large mortgages. Aspiring purchasers can only succeed if they earn enough to service the necessary mortgage. Over the nation as a whole, house prices are even now generally at a reasonable multiple of average earnings.

Here, however, Exmoor is different in that even above-average earnings are hopelessly inadequate to contemplate buying a house.

House prices are still cheap on Exmoor compared to much of the country. It is earnings that are the problem.

Higher paid jobs do not exist on Exmoor and with the current threats to employment caused by hotel closures, the move away from farming and impending country sports legislation, there is little prospect of improvement.

Planners should not be seeking to square the earnings/house price equation by creating a contentious and almost certainly unworkable false market in house prices.

Aside from promoting employment within the severe limitations imposed by national park status, their efforts should be directed towards the provision of properly funded, sustainable social housing.

That means some new building, some open market purchasing, suspension of council house "right to buy" (at a discount!) and funding proposals paid for through taxation on the whole community.

An ongoing requirement of this nature should not be funded by a swingeing one-off levy on the net worth of Exmoor's current house owners, irrespective of their wealth or circumstance.

To paraphrase a correspondent last week, it is cheap to make an omelette with someone else's eggs. Those eggs, many of them nest eggs, will be taken from every house owner in the park, not just those with second homes.

This aspect of an otherwise creditable plan must be re-thought quickly before the years of legal debate it will engender unfairly inflict lasting planning blight on house values across the whole of Exmoor, to the advantage of no-one.

David Cooper,

Pitcott House,

Winsford.