ON reading your editorial Market In Deep Crisis (October 18), I found the whole business disgusting.

Isn’t the use of an independent property management company by Oxford City Council to handle the leases on their behalf adding to the huge increase in rents as they, the ‘Central Business Agency’, have to make money?

The Covered Market, which is said to have opened in 1774, is very much part of our heritage but one cannot help wondering if the aim of the council is to make it impossible for independent traders to continue, so that the market will close and they can sell it off for development.

That would be a very sad day for Oxford indeed.

MICHAEL CLARKE, Lewell Avenue, Old Marston