SIR - Does anyone at City Hall have the foggiest idea about commercial negotiation?

We read (T&A, May 24) that Council leader Kris Hopkins is determined to end Serco's education contract in 2011.

So, having effectively given Serco four years' very public notice of non-renewal, can we expect Serco to do anything other than minimise their costs, extract their top resources and merely bat out time until the promised termination?

To borrow Del Boy's favoured phrase, what a plonker!

Any genuine negotiator would lead Serco to believe that renewal of this lucrative contract would be feasible, but only subject to their achievement of some stretching targets in the remaining four years, thus delivering a mirror-image of what will now inevitably happen.

If the Council later chose not to renew, then that's business: some they win, some they lose.

Trouble is, no-one at City Hall knows how to negotiate real business contracts, so we, the local tax-payers, will always end up subsidising their commercial incompetence.

Maybe we should recruit some of Alan Sugar's ridiculous Apprentice rejects to do the job instead - they surely couldn't be any worse.

Graham Hoyle, Kirkbourne Grove, Baildon