building of hospitals and ecotown design. Aides from the Charles's architectural charity had written to the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Hazel Blears, urging the government to adopt his positions on ecological design and planning. The Secretary of State for Health, Patricia Hewitt, also received letters from Charles's aides, who recommended the adoption by hospital trusts of design techniques devised by his architectural charity. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Andy Burnham, also received letters concerning the sustainable increase of the housing supply in a way "which provides support for the [prince's] Foundation's mission to promote timeless and ecological ways of planning, designing and building". In December 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown ordered a block on the disclosure of correspondence sent to ministers by members of the royal family at the same time as the information commissioner, Christopher Graham, blocked the release of an earlier set of correspondence which involved Prime Minister Blair. 2010: Initial FOI appeal At the FOI appeal tribunal in September 2010, Paul Richards, a former special adviser to the former communities secretary Hazel Blears and health secretary Patricia Hewitt, said that it was clear to him that Charles regularly corresponded with ministers and these letters went "to the top of the pile" and are "treated with great reverence." This is in contrast to letters from ordinary citizens, which "...go through a centralised mailroom and which are normally dealt with by departmental staff and rarely seen by ministers or their advisers." Richards had been a special adviser from 2005 to 2009 and said that Charles wrote on issues including planning applications and government health policy. Richards believed that lobbying from Charles had contributed to a £1.1m grant awarded to his Foundation for Integrated Health. Richards believed that the grant arose after "behind-the-scenes lobbying" from Charles, and occurred at the same time as a reception hosted by the prince at his London residence, Clarence House, attended by at least one health minister and an adviser to Prime Minister Blair. Richards said that Charles had complained to education secretary Ed Balls about changes to the primary school syllabus and had lobbied Yvette Cooper over the design of ecotowns. Charles had written to Blears after she had suggested that Poundbury, in Dorset, a village built according to the prince's architectural precepts, was "little more than a royal ego trip". The letter from Charles subsequently invited Blears