BEAU (MR) (Your Letters, Jan 28) chooses to attack this company publicly and I am therefore obliged to correct his assertion that we treated former employee Dr Priestley "so appallingly" and with "obvious malice and bigotry."

Dr Priestley was never discriminated against by this company because of his sexual orientation.

He failed in his attempt to persuade an Industrial Tribunal that there was discrimination and yet these totally inaccurate claims and offensive attacks on the integrity of the company and its employees continue.

All the staff at Highbank are hard-working people who strongly resent these unsupported charges being made against them.

I hope that this puts the matter to rest.

PHILIP THOMAS,

general manager, Highbank Rehabilitation Centre.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.