SIR - At the last Council meeting a question was asked about the good sense of closing Yorkshire Martyrs at the same time as the number of Catholic new arrivals' was increasing.

The view of the Roman Catholic diocese seems to be that as less than half of the pupils at the school are Catholics they can be accommodated elsewhere after the restructure, so what's the problem?

The inevitable consequence of this though is an even higher concentration of pupils segregated from others "not like themselves" because of their parents' religious beliefs.

We already have some Muslim schools with no non-Muslims and no doubt other faiths look upon this with some envy.

When this degree of religious segregation in our schools, very much encouraged by the Government, is added to an increasing level of segregation based upon the socio-economic background of parents, we begin to see that the fantastic work some people are doing to try and improve community cohesion in the Bradford District is likely to be Canute-like in effect.

Councillor David Ward (Lib-Dem, Idle & Thackley) Clara Road, Bradford