Sir - The city council has approved the Westgate application. It wants to see a vast expansion of the shopping centre that will extend from Bonn Square to Thames Street and take in Abbey Place as well. And OX1 and the Chamber of Commerce are jumping for joy. It can't come too soon for them.

Have they given any thought to the consequences for the other shops presently at the centre? In the first Westgate application, in 1999, and at the subsequent Inquiry in 2001-2002, the applicants revealed that they expected the proposed Westgate extension to cannibalise ten to 15 per cent of the rest of the centre's trade. That application was rejected.

If it had gone through, the planned Westgate extension would be opening this very year, and our shopkeepers would be losing this significant slice of turnover right now. According to the applicants at the time, this wouldn't matter: Oxford, they promised, would be 34 per cent more prosperous by 2006, and shopkeepers would just laugh off this almost petty reduction in trade. Are we really so much better off? And would they?

The new application, just approved by the city, hopes to see the extension open in 2011. It tells us that Westgate will then take 61 per cent of its increased turnover by diversion from the traditional city. The price would be that the shops in the rest of the centre would lose 13.9 per cent of their trade (they are very exact).

Would this really have no effect on the traditional city centre, or would we see every fifth or sixth shop failing, with blank windows on the High Street?

Why do the city and OX1 want this? Can councillors explain their position to us? Or will they continue mute?

M. Treisman, Oxford