YOU reported the initiatives being taken to tackle loneliness being experienced in older age together with advice to people on what they could do to help themselves.

Help the Aged carried out research in 2006 which, unsurprisingly, found that four-fifths of older people would much prefer to live in their own home and if they became disabled three-quarters would prefer to have their homes adapted rather than move.

This is the essence of our dilemma in a country which has been found to be loneliest society in Europe and is facing extreme difficulty in meeting the costs of health and social care.

Today's Letters

During the next few years, hundreds of thousands of new homes will be built, (100,000 being planned for Oxfordshire) which are most likely to follow a model that could reasonably be described as “pandering to privacy”.

In 1968, an American sociologist Philip Slater suggested that, “The longing for privacy is generated by the drastic conditions that a longing for privacy produces.”

We seem to be in this vicious cycle where clinging on to our independence makes it increasingly difficult to provide mutual support and affection.

Private housing is being designed to be not only privately owned but also anti-social in its occupation.

However, as part of the 20 per cent to 25 per cent wanting less independence, the 2006 research also found that there was “pressure” to develop new alternative models of communal housing such as “co-housing”.

The challenge for us, the local authority planners, and organisations like Age UK is how to convert this pressure into effective demand and real supply of housing conducive to companionship, conviviality and caring.

Maybe the Local Plans and Neighbourhood Plans would be good starting places.

DANIEL SCHARF Abingdon Road, Drayton