Sir - The council boasts that it has struck a good deal for Oxford on bus shelters (Report, March 14).

It will get 180 across the city, free, if they carry advertising hoardings. The advertising company is interested, of course, not in bus shelters but in advertising space. From its perspective, the council has just agreed to the construction of 180 advertising hoardings in the configuration of bus shelters.

Bus shelters, however necessary in some places, add to street clutter.

The design principle for shelters is that they should be as unobtrusive as possible. They should be constructed of colourless transparent material, so that the line of vision passes through them as if they scarcely existed.

It remains to be seen how much these 180 advertising hoardings will deface Oxford's urban landscape. However, the Lib Dem council may just have done the city's visual environment a big disservice.

Michael Goldacre, Oxford