IAN W Thomson (Letters, March 10) picks up on the housing problems evident from Ken Smith's "Those were the days" photograph of the Cochran family in their cramped kitchen (“When folk really had to slum it in Glasgow’s decrepit housing”, The Herald, March 9). The scale of the problem was enormous – from the post-war initiatives of the 1950s I was privileged to work on some of the major high rise/multi-storey developments that followed into the 1960s, also the tenement rehabilitation projects over the next decade or so, where many sub- standard homes were remodelled and upgraded to better suit various family sizes and needs. This, in turn, was followed by work on the existing housing areas such as Castlemilk and Barlanark. The development of new towns also contributed considerably to these efforts.

The pace and urgency of these initiatives lead to environmental and social problems which are still being addressed, with energy issues now a major challenge in both public and private sector housing, but in the context of the Cochran family huge progress has been made.

Duncan Miller,

38 Middlemuir Road, Lenzie.