COUNCILLOR Colin Cook’s assertion that the crisis facing the Covered Market is partly due to “the age of some traders, who are looking to retire and cash in their chips” is both insulting and untimely.

Your main article (Oxford Mail, October 18) and editorial rightly point out the importance of the Covered Market to Oxford, and highlight the difficulties it is now facing.

There are several reasons for these difficulties, chief among them the pressure faced by all retailers, especially independent ones, in the current economic situation.

In view of this, both the city council and the traders have to adapt to the current realities and significantly change the way in which they work (or fail to work) together.

A workshop held last January to discuss the future of the market identified a number of next steps that needed to be taken, including “A Partnership Charter as a joint statement of intent by landlord and tenants.”

Rather than an interminable and costly wrangling over rents, I would like to see both sides working together to develop such an imaginative and effective partnership.

Councillor Cook’s offensive comments serve only to incense the traders and to delay constructive progress.

I call on him to withdraw his remarks, and on the Labour administration to disassociate itself from what he has written.

I am not holding my breath.

JIM CAMPBELL, Liberal Democrat city councillor, Frenchay Road, Oxford