RE: 'Store Plans Approved' (Messenger, July 21) I HAVE pointed out before how I have no interest in what development, if any, takes place on Sale Moor's Warrener Street car park.

I don't live in Sale Moor, so it's none of my business whether local residents have a car park, supermarket, offices, flats or a zoo, I simply don't care.

However, I do care about data, and when it is misrepresented, either deliberately or through ignorance. We have seen quite enough of that on both sides of the recent EU referendum.

So I was dismayed to read in the Messenger about Cllr Nathan Evans' comments at the recent planning meeting on the Warrener Street application. You reported how he referred to Cllr Freeman's local residents' questionnaire on the proposed supermarket: "There were 3,000 questionnaires, which had 600 responses and 80% were against it… That is 16% of the 3,000 people surveyed, which would suggest 84% are not bothered or are in favour."

Cllr Evans' mangled conclusion from the research results is ENTIRELY INCORRECT. There is NOTHING in those results to suggest the opinion of the people who did not (for whatever reason) return a questionnaire.

A 20 per cent response rate (600 questionnaires returned) is perfectly respectable, and one then gauges public opinion based on the responses received, and nothing else.

You CANNOT say that non-respondents "are not bothered or are in favour" - that is not how research works, and is an utterly absurd statement based on the figures on the table.

Of course we have already seen this exact muddle-headed argument aired in the Messenger's letters' pages earlier this summer, where it was irritating, though ultimately harmless.

But hearing the same half-baked and incorrect conclusion from a member of the planning committee who ought to be capable of correctly interpreting data in order to fulfil their duty is very troubling indeed.

Simon Jones Sale