BARBARA Dawson’s letter bemoaning the state of Hereford’s once thriving city centre (Hereford Times, April 16) ignores a prime, if not the prime, reason why the decay is setting in, it’s namely the proliferation of giant supermarkets.

The council’s consistently laissez faire, financially-motivated approval of planning applications for these large retailers, who have long extended their ranges beyond just food and drink, inevitably squeezes out smaller shopkeepers, most of whom have local rather than national or international owners, which in turn takes money out of the local economy.

Once the genie is out of this particular bottle, it’s almost impossible to get it back in again and I’m therefore afraid Hereford’s once bustling, highly varied retail landscape is probably lost forever. Charity shops, ‘pound shops’ and boarded-up windows are the inevitable consequence, with higher levels of littering and vandalism as an added eyesore.

So don't blame the credit crunch, blame a greedy, myopic council.

MARK WILLIAMS, Broad Street, Presteigne.