AS I sat down to write this, I received the Government inspector s report on planned housing numbers for this area. If you remember, there was a dispute between local authorities and the Government over how many houses the six eastern counties should pl

AS I sat down to write this, I received the Government inspector's report on planned housing numbers for this area.

If you remember, there was a dispute between local authorities and the Government over how many houses the six eastern counties should plan on building between now and 2021.

This latest report suggests that the Cambridge area should accept an additional 4,300 homes, on top of the 14,700 already planned for the city.

The report also suggests an additional 3,800 for Peterborough and 900 for Fenland.

It is a very long report, and I have not yet had time to go through it in detail.

However, my initial reaction is that such an increase is simply not achievable and that the supporting infrastructure would be inadequate.

The increase in this county is twice as great as that demanded of any other county.

We cannot see where the matching jobs would come from which, in turn, takes us back to the suggestion that Cambridgeshire will, inevitably, become (even more than now) a part of the London commuter belt.

We will be asking some searching questions about how the inspector reached these conclusions.