G BONNEY in his letter published last week has some very harsh words about the attitude of Wycombe District Council towards older people living in the area, which are totally unfounded, and to which I feel must respond.

My company, CM Research, together with our associates at NEMS Market Research, are totally independent market research companies, appointed by Wycombe District Council to carry out an important survey on their behalf, so it was not anyone from the council that they spoke to.

We have huge experience in conducting surveys for councils across the country and pride ourselves in the high quality of our work and have worked successfully with a number of them since 1981.

It was a vitally important part of this survey that a representative cross-section of residents aged 18 and over was interviewed to obtain a statistically accurate reflection of the views of the community and that particular groups were not under or over-represented. We needed to apply quota controls by age, gender, postcode and more.

Starting an interview our procedure is for the interviewer to give their name and who they work for, then, depending on the survey, on whose behalf it is being conducted (i.e. it is not being conducted by the council themselves).

Sometimes we need to ascertain the respondent's age. If we need to interview people of that age group, the interview progresses. However as we complete more interviews on a survey, certain age groups become filled and we no longer need to conduct interviews among these age groups and in this situation, again a standard polite response is given to the respondent.

It would be clearly not very sensible for us to ask a respondent's age before explaining why and they were most certainly not "brutally dismissed" as said in the letter.

We are sorry that G Bonney feels aggrieved, but would like to say that we know Wycombe District Council cares very much about the views and opinions of all residents and it was specifically so that they can look to further improve their performance and perception that the survey was commissioned as a follow up to similar previous projects.

Richard Cooper, CM Research, Tring , Herts