SIR – Bradford MDC, like all local authorities, is legally bound to produce a district-wide development framework for the creation of 45,500 living units and all associated infrastructures, to accommodate the Government’s projected population increase over the next 16 years. None of the sites which have, to date, been proposed for housing or commercial development has been accepted by the general public, as is evidenced by the reports on them in this paper, and this resistance is likely to intensify as the project proceeds.

The world’s exponentially expanding population cannot be sustained indefinitely. Left unchecked, nature will restore the situation, by exploiting man’s poor husbandry by way of famine, flood or fire. Rather than accepting man’s insatiable propagation abilities as sacrosanct and vainly trying to accommodate the results, should we not be taking action and encouraging the rest of the world to take action, to control the population explosion, as is allegedly already being done by the Chinese government?

An ascending scale of measures could be introduced, from education and free contraception to female sterilisation after a decreed number of births. A financial constraint would be socially unfair and difficult to administer. D A Moncaster, Fyfe Grove, Baildon