Bosses at the council where Norwich grandmother Jennifer Mills-Westley used to work are to write to her devastated family to pay their condolences to them after she was brutally murdered in a shop in Tenerife.

Former Norfolk County Council road safety officer Mrs Mills-Westley, who lived in Hellesdon before retiring to live in Tenerife, was viciously stabbed and decapitated in an attack at a shop in Los Cristianos on Friday.

A spokesman confirmed that bosses at County Hall planned to write a letter to her family to express their sympathy following the savage killing which has shocked and sickened both her friends and family and the wider world too.

He said: 'Both the leader and chairman of the county council are writing letters of condolence to the family.'

Mrs Mills-Westley has been described as a popular and well-respected member of staff at the county council where she worked as a road safety officer.

She worked with many schools and children to teach cycling training and make Norfolk's roads safer. Earlier this week former work colleague Iain Temperton, team manager for the casualty reduction team at Norfolk County Council, paid his own tribute to the 60-year-old mother-of-two and grandmother-of-five.

He said: 'She really engaged with the public. She had a wonderful sense of humour. She was always upbeat. I don't remember a day when she had a bad day. In the office she was always positive and cheerful.'

As revealed yesterday, Norwich MP Chloe Smith has backed calls for an urgent inquiry into why the man accused of the brutal killing of Mrs Mills-Westley was released from a mental health hospital in the UK before the murder.

Deyan Deyanov, 28, who was arrested on suspicion of her murder, appeared in court on Sunday and was remanded to the prison Tenerife II. It has since emerged that Deyanov was sectioned during a visit to see relatives in the UK last summer and admitted to the Ablett Psychiatric Unit at Glan Clwyd Hospital, north Wales.

Would you like to pay tribute to Jennifer Mills-Westley? Call Peter Walsh on 01603 772436 or email peter.walsh@archant.co.uk