The early warning that wasn't heeded

The concerns were raised in a letter by a private company offering the same business services.

Its concerns were dismissed as "misconceptions" in the response.

An assurance was given that no public money went into that area of the unit's activities and there were "no proposals in the unit's service plan to take away your business".

Despite that assurance, the unit's pricing policy drove down the cost of services to little more than 30 for hydrometer calibration work which is a highly technical process for measuring the density of liquids.

This was less than half the 75 similar businesses in this country and mainland Europe had been charging.

Even the higher price only allowed companies a restricted profit margin.

Years later, when Mike Buckley rejected Freedom of Information requests from the same company on the grounds the answers were commercially sensitive, the decision was upheld when an appeal was made to Sheffield Council.