Excerpt from letter of 08 November 1999 to Dr. Pirkko Saarikivi, Managing Director of Weather Service Finland Ltd from Trevor Pitt, Manager of Noble Denton Weather Service Ltd

"I have read the associated material and naturally I am very aware of the problems associated with the dissemination and purchase of meteorological data from Ecomet. In fact Noble Denton Weather Services Limited accepted long ago that Ecomet data supply was too expensive for the type of work we undertake and have had to modify the work we do because of it. We have used US data for the last 5 years in varying forms and although it has stood us in good stead we now need to progress up a level or two and would very much like to make more use of European data. I have approached the UK Met office on several occasions, but each time we have felt that the cost of data exceeds the cost we can value add and on-pass to our clients. Times are changing though and it now seems that some form of `common sense' is being applied to the costing of data and its supply (ever since UK Met office outstations have had to purchase their data).

As a consequence of the above I have few details I can add to Annex 7 as I have given up on the occasions I have tried, owing to the cost of the data being about double the cost of the sale price of the forecast!"