Building Control and South Tyneside Council

Building Control and South Tyneside Council
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: 07/12/2020 (11:18:36 GMT)
To: John Rumney
Cc: Emma Lewell-Buck MP, Anne-marie Trevelyan MP,
Alison Hoy, Cllr Angela Hamilton, Cllr David Francis,
Peter Cunningham, George Mansbridge, Hayley Johnson,
Bcc: 20 or so

2 Attachments: CritiqueHJforCEO1Aug16.pdf (55 KB)
               BCandSTCtoJR7-Dec-20.pdf (82 KB)

Dear Mr Rumney,

Please see the attached: “CritiqueHJforCEO1Aug16” and “Building Control and South Tyneside Council” (BCandSTCtoJR7-Dec-20).
The copy of my letter, South Tyneside Council and the Local Government Ombudsman, sent last week has been relabelled: STCandLGO30-Nov-20 to avoid confusion. I’d forgotten I had used the title before and I apologise.

Much more to the point is the response from Alison Hoy to my email to Michaela, of Customer Advocates, the post of Monitoring Officer not being known to me.
It was obvious that Hayley Johnson had not registered the complaint about the staff because she countered it with the contradiction:/ “There is no evidence to suggest that there has been deliberate misinformation provided by Council officers to the Local Government Ombudsman” / which is the technique employed by the planning team to neutralise a complaint.
Alison also referred my escalation (see below) back to Mrs Johnson so that she could carry out her threat, 5-Oct-16, made on 1-Aug-20 without anyone except for myself giving it a critical review – please see the attached criticism, a much more critical view than my original repost.
One thing that was so obvious to me was overlooked when I passed my criticism to Customer Advocacy and that there was only /ONE /complaint about the Council giving misinformation to the Ombudsman. Using Section F – Persistent and Unreasonable Behaviour, against me was not only defied logic it was unreasonable in itself. Don’t forget she accused the good folk of South Shields of making allegations when it was she was making allegations about us in her attachment to the MP for Berwick.
At the end of the day, if all the evidence i.e. approved drawings, say that a structure is nearly 3 meters taller than planned then no amount of mudslinging can make it approved or permitted.

Kind regards,
Michael Dawson

—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: RE: Complaint: 248789 – Unplanned Development on River Drive [NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED]
From: “Customer Advocates”
Date: Fri, September 16, 2016 11:42 am
To: “mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk” ————————————————————————–

Dear Mr Dawson
Thank you for your email and the copy of the letter sent to Mrs Johnson.
Mrs Johnson received your letter on her return to work 12 September and acknowledges its receipt.
For your information Michaela Green (nee Hamilton) is currently on secondment and therefore your email will be considered along with the letter to Mrs Johnson.
You will be contacted in due course following further checks into this matter.
Yours sincerely
Alison Hoy
Performance and Information Support Officer

—– Original Message —–
From: Mick Dawson
To: Michaela Hamilton
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2016 9:56 PM
Subject: Fw: Complaint: 248789 – Inappropriate Development on River Drive

Dear Michaela,

South Tyneside Council and the Local Government Ombudsman

Please excuse me for writing directly to you. I’ve copied you the letter I wrote to Haley Johnson today. I assume you have access to my letter to the Chief Executive 8-Jul and her reply to me 1-Aug.

She has done exactly as my solicitor predicted she would do, she said I had submitted repeated complaints, essentially regarding the same issue after the complaints process has been exhausted. There are only two complaints and I did not raise the one to which she has referred. That was 253539 and raised at Mr Mansbridge’ request and was about enforcement. I do not consider the first closed until the Council come clean on the planned height. As far as I am concerned Mr Atkinson conceded the argument about the planned height to me in February 2014.

I did ask her if she had reviewed the original complaint of the 10-Jan-2014 and the correspondence following it up to 13-February, as she would have realised that Mr Atkinson had effectively agreed that the shed was 2.7m too high. He and I were discussing the height of the shed and he could no longer maintain the pretence that 8296/14 referred to the road end. I even put a different spin on the ‘not to scale’ misrepresentation.
One only has to look at the drawing to see that it is: a) the river end (note about access for boats) and b) has a height to width ratio of about 5:4 which corresponds with 15:12 not 18:12 whatever the scale of the drawing.
Why he went on to say that it was not to scale, was not only irrelevant but appears to be a piece of misinformation designed to get himself out of an embarrassing situation. He had already said that the gable was the road end.

My main gripe with her is that she said, “There is no evidence to suggest that there has been deliberate misinformation provided by Council officers to the Local Government Ombudsman.” in spite of me giving pages in great detail to the Chief Executive. Why has she used the word deliberate – surely giving misinformation is a deliberate act in itself?

This is just adding misinformation, and is perhaps intended for the LGO, and we will end up with “The Council have told you that there is no evidence of deliberate misinformation etc.” c.f. #35 where a piece of misinformation was repeated in spite of my protestations to Mr Mansbridge (a few times I think, including the time I advised him that the drawing he was using showed both ends to be 15.5m).
/35. In January 2014 the Council wrote to Mr Dawson about this. It said the overall structure on the plans is 15.5 metres at the land end … Since then the Council has consistently told Mr Dawson the shed is the correct height./
Ms Johnson finished by saying she considers the matter closed and should I continue to repeat historic complaint issues in your contacts, the Council will consider imposing formal restrictions on your contact with the Council. The threat of a Section F Notice which you administer is why I have sent you this covering letter and a copy of my response. It is not clear with what authority she speaks. I consider the matter of the Council misinforming the LGO to be at least a complaint at Stage 3 level, which I believe is your department.

Has Ms Johnson replaced Mr Mansbridge at stage 2 of the Councils Complaint Procedure?

Kind regards
Michael Dawson

—– End forwarded message —–

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