Over the past few weeks, many correspondents have expressed concern about the housing crisis in the South-East.

What many fail to realise is that it is impossible to solve.

In order to understand why, you need to look at the cause of the problem. It started way back in the Sixties with building societies giving 100 per cent mortgages.

Having to save a large deposit actually kept prices down. Next, the Tory Government sold off the council stock.

Having persuaded the low-paid key workers to buy their council houses, the Government pushed up interest rates so high that some 400,000 people were repossessed.

The market was flooded with cheap repossessions. The high wage earners, those best able to survive the high interest rates, then made a killing on the property market.

The low paid key workers were forced into the private rental sector.

It was impossible to save a deposit for a house or anything else. Housing benefit is not paid if you have any meaningful savings.

While in opposition, Labour promised the party activists that once in power, the capital receipts held on deposits from the sale of council houses would be used to rebuild the council stocks.

Once in power, the reality set in. All promises to the party activists were broken.

If the Government was to rebuild the council stocks, thus saving millions of taxpayers' money being paid in housing benefit, the private rental sector would collapse.

That would cause the property value to crash as the market would once again be flooded. The problem would be made worse as decent rentable housing takes away some of the incentive to buy.

It all adds up to the fact low paid key workers who can not afford decent housing are being sacrificed in order to maintain the high value of the private sector.

-Simon Smith, Upper Beeding