A number of emails have been received from officers of the Ringwood Natural History Society which have been sent out to their members questioning the intentions and reasoning of the Friends of Latchmore.

The following email was sent to them in response:

 Dear Dr Syratt

 Our secretary has passed on copies of your messages about the Friends of Latchmore, a group which I chair.

I am writing to object to your assertion that we are “a group which has no intention of listening to reason”. This is wholly untrue. We have been seeking information (such as a copy of the Natural England Assessment to which you refer) and the evidence on which the assertions about the Brook made on the HLS website and elsewhere are based, so far with very little success. If you regard the HLS website as an “excellent website which explains in detail just what is proposed and why, timetable etc, in great detail” then I can only say that you are easily satisfied.

As you will see if you visit our website, we are simply asking for the FC “to suspend all further work on the Latchmore project until a full Environmental Impact Assessment has been carried out and published.” I understand that you are a professional ecologist, and I am therefore very surprised that you should object to such a request.

I must also object to the unwarranted derogatary and inflammatory remarks that both you and your President, Mike Read, have seen fit to make in your messages. These can only serve to damage the reputation of the Ringwood Natural History Society along with yours.

I would be grateful if you would please copy this message to all those to whom you sent yours, to set the record straight. If you wish to engage in a reasonable discussion of the points at issue, we shall be happy to meet with you to do so, but in any case please refrain from promulgating false statements about us.

Professor John Shepherd CBE FRS

Chair, Friends of Latchmore