Thank you for putting the story about Broad Chalke Housing Association and the concerns we have about nutrient levels into last week's paper (Plea to minister on housing levels, page 4, Thursday, September 26). 

It will, I hope, help our case to get this development unlocked and going at last.

Unfortunately you chose to cut my quote off mid sentence, and this has caused significant questions being addressed to me on whether I am actually supporting the housing development or not.

My quote actually went on to say "we just want any required measures to be funded by some other means so that these badly needed homes for local people can be built."

But unfortunately the printed quote stopped before I said that.

The photo could easily have been slightly smaller to get the full supplied text into the article. That text was carefully crafted to make our point, and now uncertainty has been sown. 

I am now having to answer questions on my support.

Please, if you are given a quote for publication, use it verbatim. Do not edit/truncate it as it causes unnecessary turmoil!

Tom Hitchings

Broad Chalke Parish Council

Chairman

Editor's note: We are very sorry to have caused any confusion and hope that printing this letter clears up any questions. To make production of our newspaper quicker, meaning we can be working on creating the news rather than presenting it, we use templates on our pages which means we have to stick to strict word counts. We regularly edit stories so they are succinct - however we do apologise that our editing in this specific case may have changed the meaning of the sentence. 

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