SIR - Keith Rayner (T&A, June 29) rightly points out that our hard surfaced cities speed water into the rivers, but the main problem is the intensity of the rainfall due to a warming atmosphere.

Flood plains and regular flooding of rivers are natural features, whether man is around or not, and civilisations have always depended on the silt from the annual floods, as along the Nile, and the levees of the Mississippi are formed in the same fashion.

It is time that we stopped building on the flood plains and left them for their natural purpose, for storing overspill water.

Keith Thomson, Heights Lane, Bradford