A DELAYED April 1 contribution to your columns? No. Apparently a perfectly serious proposal for a duplicate stadium with ancillary sports facilities on the north side of an overloaded ring road in the green belt, reliant for its financing on the profits to be made from major retail development on the existing Huntington stadium site (The Press, April 4).

This latest proposal is so preposterous as to make one question the motives behind its formulation.

Is it a ploy to derail the well-publicised Oakgate plans? What is the relationship between this new mysterious developer, conjured out of thin air, and Oakgate? Are they designed to wrong-foot the council?

All this despite the council’s consultants’ report on retail development which flags up the risks to the city centre, let alone York Central, of indiscriminate out-of-town retail development.

How much time and money has been spent on looking at these submissions? What assurances have the proposals been given that their schemes would be seriously, even favourably, considered? Why hasn’t the council’s own risk assessment of this project been more widely debated?

Philip Crowe, Clifton, York.