Sir – As a member of the cross-party city council group established to secure the future of the Covered Market, I want to reassure people that, contrary to a petition organised by Lib Dem candidates, the city council has not rejected the results of the binding arbitration agreed with five market traders.

These traders opted for arbitration and a professional arbitrator recommended rent increases averaging close to four per cent a year for the next five years.

Unfortunately, the arbitrator then miscalculated his final figure, proposing average increases of under one-and-a-half per cent per year rather than four per cent. Since the arbitration was binding, the council cannot challenge it and must apply the error for these traders.

Before the arbitrators’ report, there was an informal understanding that the arbitrators’ figures would be applied to all other market traders.

Our difficulty now is that to offer an average figure of one-and-a-half per cent to the rest, based on the arbitrators’ admitted error would leave the city council unable to generate the hundreds of thousand pounds to improve the Covered Market, as recommended in the cross-party report.

Our dilemma is between agreeing lower rents and lacking funds to invest in the market, or to go to arbitration for the remaining traders, causing another delay, which jeopardises improvements and relationships between the traders and the council.

It is shocking that, despite the Lib Dem majority on the review knowing full well the truth, they now try to mislead and unsettle the public.

Mary Clarkson, Councillor, Marston Ward Oxford City Council