COUNCIL heritage and leisure chiefs seem to have missed a great chance to meet the wishes of many York residents and visitors who now, or shall in the future, use the City Archives by seemingly failing to include them in the proposed "cultural quarter" development around Exhibition Square.

You quote an anonymous council spokeswoman whose wordy statement tells us nothing of the actual reasoning behind this neglect.

Could someone from the council, perhaps Janet Barnes, explain to us quite simply why it is our city's historical and documentary collections cannot be housed within a development providing facilities which reach national standards.

Moves to transfer libraries and social collections to educational establishments are worrying and risk excluding many of those who now use them.

Jonathan Charles Bonner,

Huntington Road, York.

Updated: 09:35 Wednesday, July 20, 2005