SIR - This is a letter I sent to M&S CEO Archie Norman and senior members of the board:

I am writing to you to express how disappointed you make 540 000 Bradfordians feel, following your proposals to close your Bradford store.

My family has been loyal to you for generations. We feel rejected and dejected by this proposition: it says that our money is not good enough, that our city is not good enough, that we as people are not

good enough for your trade.

The impact of your potential withdrawal from Bradford is huge: your store is an anchor in our hard fought for Broadway Centre and the loss of footfall and customers will be devastating for other outlets in the city: other businesses will suffer, and sadly close.

From my experience and observations, the Bradford store is busy, with standing queues at the tills and people parting with hard-earned cash, adding to your bottom line, £12bn turnover and £500m plus profit: huge, barely imaginable figures.

The scant information about your Broadway store, given that you have disclosed so little, indicates that turnover is good but costs are too high, yet you have not communicated this to anyone, including the landlord for Bradford Broadway, Westfield.

A business of your size, weight and contribution to the UK economy has the power to change things.

Renegotiate the rent with the landlord.Find new premises in Bradford that are less expensive. Think about your core business and target customers, perhaps earning well but are not the youngest market segment: advertise M&S through television. Also think about your younger customers - and by the way this is one of the youngest cities in Europe - and engender brand-loyalty to M&S quality products and services at a younger age.

Think about women in this city and actually begin to stock clothes in their size: it's difficult for women and girls to obtain sizes 10 and below.

Think about Bradford's new Bradford Live! Venue, opening up this year, with tens of thousands of concert-goers coming to the city, all needing to buy M&S products.

Think about Bradford's City of Culture status for 2025, with hundreds of millions of pounds injected into the Bradford economy, a not insignificant percentage of which will end up in the cash registers of M&S Bradford - If you stay.

Bradford is not a suburb of Leeds. You will not find our 540 000 people making our way to Pudsey, the White Rose Centre or other places outside of Bradford as indicated in your estate rotation, even if your core customers were achievably mobile: it is contemptuous, offensive even, of you to suggest this.

Please reassess your current thinking: surely this is a city where you can trade, provide, thrive and profit for the long term.

John Robinson, Shipley

So other T&A readers can write with their views, here is the address: Marks and Spencer, Waterside House, 35 North Wharf Road, London W2 1NW