According to an article in The Press, air pollution plays a role in one in 24 deaths in York (Shock at air pollution death toll, January 27). So why is the city council insisting on building a multi-storey car park at St George’s Field? The ring road is already heavily congested and the pollution levels will obviously increase with a multi-storey car park - on top of which the council will be borrowing millions to build it.

Recently there has been so much talk on climate change, on cleaning up cities, on improving the health of citizens in those cities, on reducing the carbon footprint. But what is the point of investing £1.6 million to create the UK’s first voluntary clean air zone if just a few yards away a multi-storey car park will be built, increasing the traffic and pollution?

In the words of Martin Luther King: we need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice: not in love with publicity but in love with humanity.

Lynette Mills,

Fishergate, York

What will new car park’s carbon footprint be?

A REPORT by yet another think tank, Centre for Cities, states that wood burning stoves, coal fires and transport should be banned to reduce pollution.

How does this organisation know how many coal fires and wood burning stoves are being used in York? Very few I would suggest.

At the same time York’s latest Lib Dem\Green party-controlled council intends to build a multi-storey car park in the city centre.

Do councillors have any concept of how much fossil fuel is used to produce the thousands of tons of steel and cement that is required to build such a structure, and the cost of transporting such products the many miles to York? The likelihood is the steel may come from plants at the other side of the world.

Trevor Scott,

Boroughbridge Road, York