Figures obtained using the Freedom of Information Act, shown in the Oldham Borough Chief Executive's Directorate report (attached), give a clear month by month breakdown of the complaints received between April 2006 and March 2007. It is evident that the alleged hundreds of complaints per month simply never existed and that complaints were at their lowest ever level when Trading Standards were portraying the situation as one that justified mounting an extraordinary pre-dawn raid by 130 police officers.

Following the raid, which generated huge publicity, complaints rose to unprecedented levels, providing Oldham Trading Standards for the first time with the kind of figures needed to back their campaign. Even so, it amounts to too little and too late: their 'final grand total' of 2,000 falls a long way short of the 50,000 originally used as justification, which they claimed to have already recorded months earlier.

Staff at Kitchens and myself have worked hard to resolve all the complaints notified and have succeeded in every case, even when hampered by missing records following the seizure of all the company's paperwork and computer files in the November police action.

Today, all the Kitchens customers quoted in newspaper articles or referred to in BBC Watchdog programmes are happy to speak to reporters about their thorough satisfaction with the service they have received.