HorfieldROSE Replies to Ombudsman

HorfieldROSE has now replied to the Ombudsman's provisional view letter. Our reply letter, which ran to eleven pages of text and fifty-five pages of new evidence, was sent Wednesday 16th January to meet a mutually agreed new deadline of the 18th January 2008.

Whilst we cannot publish our letter for the time being due to the quasi-judicial procedures the Ombudsman follows when working on a complaint of this nature, we can assure residents we have explored every aspect of the Councils planning procedures and codes of conduct and ensured all 'deviations' have been included in the response.

Also, the planning application documentation held by Bristol City Council has been searched during many visits to the Council's planning office and again relevant information supporting our case has been passed to the Ombudsman's Office.

We will be contacting the Ombudsman's Investigator next week to seek a date of reply to our letter, though we suspect, given the amount of new information we have supplied, he will only be able to give an estimated timescale.

However, I think we would all agree that the Investigator should be allowed the time to do a thorough job of investigating our complaints, rather than rushing the work and missing so vital issues.