Sir – At last some sense on the Westgate redevelopment proposals (Trust speaks out on Westgate proposals, Report, December 12).

Debbie Dance, director of the Oxford Preservation Trust, with its office in Turn Again Lane, at the heart of what is being proposed, knows better than anyone what the Westgate Alliance’s outline planning application could mean: in effect blank pages to be filled in later “contrary to policies on height and heritage”.

Sara Fuge, Westgate Alliance’s development manager, claims: “The Westgate Alliance is very conscious of the historical importance of Oxford city centre and its buildings.”

Yes, no doubt but the alliance’s primary aim is to create as much square footage for retail as possible, including an overbearing 10,000 sq ft John Lewis (‘super’) store.

Historical and community dimensions must for the the alliance and its investors be secondary. So hats off to Debbie Dance for pressing the city council to refuse “outline planning application”.

Imagine an alternative plan: demolish all the existing Westgate and turn the area over to co-housing clusters, serviced by locally- run shops, with workshop space also available. In doing this, something of the old St Ebbe’s could be recaptured (see John Mogey’s 1956 Family and Neighbourhood for an account of what used to be St Ebbe’s). Of course this won’t happen and Oxford will get its “world quality” shopping centre, defined against existing “world quality” retail mutations in Swindon, Milton Keynes, and Reading, offering minimum wage and zero hour jobs. O Brave New World . . .

Bruce Ross-Smith, Headington