SIR - The worldwide corporate finance market teeters on the brink of collapse, with lost confidence from the Americans' sub-prime crisis causing a global credit-crunch'.

Commercial property values are falling in Britain faster than has ever been recorded. Investment funds trading in commercial property are, quite disgracefully some say, preventing small investors from withdrawing their cash, as the potential sale and rental values of all their properties head downwards.

Retail spending in high street stores is declining rapidly, as customers stay away or shop on-line.

It is into this unhealthy climate that Westfield is planning to finance a major retail development in the centre of a once-proud city, but which has spent the last 50 years in an accelerating decline and which shows no vision of how to reverse, or even slow down, that trend.

Is it only Bradford Council which thinks it's a good idea to throw vast amounts of my money into Westfield at this time?

And how long before they use credit-crunch' as the latest in their long line of excuses for the lack of progress on this contract?

Graham Hoyle, Kirkbourne Grove, Baildon