Councillor Gabriel Rozenberg trumpets how wonderful it is that Barnet is to have 20,000 more homes over the next two decades (‘Housing crisis claim is nonsense’, Your Views, February 26).

What he doesn’t say is that a mere 42 of these will be council homes — just 0.02 per cent of the total. He doesn’t say that most of the homes are for sale on the open market, mainly going to outsiders, especially overseas speculators, to the disadvantage of local people in desperate need.

He doesn’t say that more than the lion’s share of the building is not in his garden suburb, but in the already overdeveloped west of the borough, especially Colindale and West Hendon.

Perhaps he would like to come with me to speak to residents in Colindale, who find their services overstretched to the limit, and can’t find anywhere to park? Or to come with me to West Hendon, where 580 social and affordable homes are being replaced with only half that number in a development of 2,000 properties, to speak with leaseholders facing compulsory purchase orders for a fraction of what their homes are worth, with those tenants being rehoused in a block in the car park and those other tenants who are being deported to who knows where.

Yes, we need new homes, but new homes that local people can genuinely afford to buy or to rent and with the services needed to support them, not the expensive product of the Conservatives’ mad dash to build luxury homes beyond the reach of Hendon and Barnet residents in desperate need of a home.

Andrew Dismore

Labour parliamentary candidate for Hendon London Assembly Member for Barnet and Camden