The fact that the headline has nothing to do with the letter is perhaps explained by the presence of another letter with the same headline that actually is about about getting city status for Colchester (specifically, as opposed to awarding it to Southend).
Elsewhere in the paper are two short articles with the following headlines: "Neighbours win £1k lottery prize" and "£1k prize win for neighbours". Although these look to be describing the same event, they're not: postcodes CO5 8BH and CO4 0NL both came up in the Postcode Lottery. Normally, this kind of coincidence would have been made more of by combining the reports into a single, longer article about how lucky the people of Colchester are. Thankful that I am that this didn't happen, I'm left wondering what the cause might be.
Things are looking up with other headlines: there are only four "man" headlines and one "revamp". The forced puns in the larger headlines are still present, but happily not in the most bizarre headline of the issue: "Dead squirrels found dumped at roadside".
It's sad to see the newspaper going downhill, but this is what happens when advertising all goes online.