Sir, In his letter (June 9) Tony Joyce applauded the decision of the city council's strategic development control committee to reject the carefully worked out proposals for the building of a new health centre on the Radcliffe Infirmary site.

There may indeed be arguable grounds for resisting this development in terms of preserving a historically significant site. Not everybody will be so easily convinced.

Those who now will inevitably suffer are the members of the public.

New national policies require that facilities which have hitherto been provided in a hospital setting will now be located in the community. And so for all of Oxford we must ask: where and how?

We know, as members of the statutorily constituted Oxford city forum on Patient and Public Involvement in Health how hard we tried, in close consultation with the PCT, to balance all the conflicting interests and concerns, and only after careful thought concluded that the flexible proposals made by the PCT provided the best available solution.

It was, moreover, the solution which allowed part of the site of a prestigious hospital to continue to serve the needs of the local community. But that solution has now been rejected, and sadly no viable alternatives are available.

Although new premises to deliver such essential services as X-rays and therapies are becoming available in several parts of Oxford, there are central areas which will now be left in a lamentable situation.

It is always easier to say no to a proposal which inevitably reflects a compromise than to find solutions which will work effectively towards the health and welfare of the public as a whole.

Barbara Jeffrey, Mary Judge , Oxford