I have now received and accepted the following apology regarding my recent experience with the BHWT and it is reproduced below with the agreement of the writer in the interest of fairness
"Dear Neil
I am writing to apologise for the dealings you have had with one of our Essex team.
Although there are millions of hens in cages in the UK, we only manage to access a small number of these and so we try to find them the best homes we can. We sometimes get approached by people who simply want cheap hens, expect them to lay enough eggs to earn their keep and will dispose of them when they stop laying. These are homes we try to avoid for the hens and unfortunately I think this is what ****** read into your email.
Clearly ****** misunderstood your intentions and reacted quite sharply, and for that I can only apologise. Our volunteers have the best intentions but in this case I think ******'s protectiveness of the hens caused a knee-jerk reaction.
I can appreciate that following your experience you may have decided against rehoming any ex-bats but if you change your mind please do get in touch.
Once again, please accept our apologies."
The apology was sent from a lady at the charities central offices and, I feel made without reservation and aknowledges that persons initial reaction to my enquirey was a little bit of a knee jerk reaction and I have accepted the actions of the local co ordinator were based on the best of intentions ie protecting the ex batts from further explotation.
I hope this will now draw a line under this thread and maybe the moderator will lock it so no further posts.