Mr Mansbridge and the Petition
The Head of Development Services still owes us an apology for misinforming the rest of the community about the shed in his response to our Petition and everybody’s complaints i.e. repeating the drawing error based lie about it being the correct height but he made it clear that he was not interested in the truth because not only did he not stop UK Docks completing their shed he passed my letter straight back to Mr Atkinson – another cycle of deceit. It was never actioned because Mr Atkinson later passed our request of the 4th March, for the shed to be removed, forward to Mr Mansbridge, 25-Apr-14.
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 12:43:07 Subject: feedback case 248789:
Dear Mr Dawson I’m sorry for the delay. Mr Mansbridge is hoping to get a comprehensive response off to residents by the end of next week.
Regards Gordon Atkinson.
When Mr Mansbridge received my letter on the 4th April he notified me that 248789 had been updated but not told me that he had passed my my letter back to Mr Atkinson. Meanwhile I thought he ought to be made aware of the misconduct of his Planning Officers, 2-May-14. That too is still awaiting attention.
While I was delivering the complaint about the way his staff were dealing with UK Docks, South Tyneside Council were delivering their response to our Petition, 2-May-14 and the first thing to notice is that it was not answered by the Chief Executive. Next and of more concern is his repetition of the Planning Manager’s fraudulent claim that the shed had been approved: The approved dimensions of the steelwork are: • Proposed height 15.5m at the River Drive end. The gradient of the slipway is 2.66m over the length of the shelter. This would mean the height at the riverside end would be 18.16m above the slipway.
Naturally, an attempt was made to draw attention to his repetition of the fraudulent claim about the height of the shed and I ask him to:
1. please examine again the plans that are held by your office and you will see that the elevation in the drawing 8296/14 is the north end and that scaling gives the elevation height to be 15.5m and subsequently the south elevation 12.5m – if you have any problems with this than please provide the full frame drawing from which the elevation is taken.
2. please consider a correction to the letters sent to the households 32 to 99 Greens Place and all the households in Harbour View;
It must be stressed, only approved amendments made since 1996 could be shown on 8296/14:
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The river end gable elevation on 8296/14 is drawn to a scale of 1:100 and is approximately 16cm x 12.5cm which equates to the section at the river end section given on either 8296/1A or 1B, 15.5m x 12.5m and a landward end of 2.7m less, making the approved height to be 12.8m. Mr Mansbridge does not specify which drawing he was using to misinform the residents but I can tell you it was not 8296/14 as it was not Messrs Cunningham and Atkinson preferred drawing.
Mr Mansbridge and the Complaints Procedure
The correction was never sent. Not only did this save him the embarrassment of having to apologise to the nearby households it also saved him from having to instruct his Enforcement Officer to instruct UK Docks to rebuild their shed to the correct height or remove it and it would have been up to UK Docks to decide whether they dismantled the shed or sent in an application for the Council for them to reconsider it retrospectively.
Instead he instructed his Officers to raise yet another complaint, 253539, to overwrite 248789, much as Mr Atkinson had overwritten the complaint of January 2014 and Mr Cunningham had done way with yours at the Town Hall meeting in November:
Planning enforcement of Tyne Slipway boat shed. – Letter to GM following previous letter dated 4th April. – Not happy with G. Atkinsons response at Stage 1. Letter to be dealt with at Stage 2.
The Council were correct in issuing the Stop Notice in September 2013, but nothing was written down and it appears to have been a Gentleman’s Agreement and UK Docks broke it when they restarted work after the Town Hall meeting of November. All still perfectly legal and here we get to the crux of the matter.
Mr Cunningham had misled the majority of the committee of the TGA by falsely claiming that the shed had been approved and rather than admit it, he removed the evidence by deleting the complaint to Planning Enquiries of January 10th 2014, and the Planning Manager was complicit in this act by replacing it with: “see email to planning 14/1/14. Mr Dawson asking various questions relating to the ongoing development at the slipway,” and then refusing to answer the vital question: “As the applicant has not discharged condition 2 why is there no retrospective planning application?
Incidentally the last word on this, from the Council was: “I can confirm that the Council as Local Planning Authority has not received a retrospective planning application from UK Docks. It is entirely a matter for UK Docks to decide whether or not to submit such an application and the Council has no influence in that matter.” Monitoring Officer, 19-Dec-19.
Notice the subtle shift of blame back onto UK Docks which took place over nearly six years when in fact it had been the Council defending UK Docks position by repeating the lie that they had approval for their shed for all that time. Mr Cunningham had just simply said the shed was compliant with the approved drawings but his Manager had embellished it when he said it in accordance with them.
I say embellished because he adds: “That shows the overall height of the structure as 15.5m above the foundation level at the landward end.” and as I have shown that while the drawing does say that, to repeat it to mean the shed shad been approved at that height is fraudulent misrepresentation and we saw it being repeated in the response to our Petition by Mr Mansbridge.
It was possible Mr Mansbridge may have not have been aware of the Gentleman’s Agreement nor that it was a gross misrepresentation to claim that the approved height was 15.5m when he wrote to the residents of Greens Place and Harbour View but it seems unlikely. He was told in no uncertain terms that the shed was 3 meters taller than planned: 1-Apr-14, that his staff had been dishonest about it: 2-May-14 and that he had lied to us in his response to our Petition: 9-May-14.
Following the admission by Mr Atkinson, that we were correct about the shed being taller than planned Mr Mansbridge wrote to some of the residents to say that it wasn’t.
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That was a lie of course and to cover that up and 248789 had died a natural death with Mr Atkinson’s admission so it was taken out and 253539 replaced it to reintroduce a complaint to take forward to the Local Government Ombudsman which failed to mention the shed’s height.
STAGE 2 COMPLAINT – Development at UK Docks Ltd, River Drive – 2nd June 14
1 am writing in response to your letters of 2nd and 9th May regarding the above.
You have made it clear in your letter of 2nd May that you were not happy that I referred your email of 4th April 2014 on to my Planning Department. I apologise if you feel that was inappropriate, however, this is required under the Council’s complaints procedure and allows for the appropriate escalation of cases to Head of Service level should the operational department not provide a satisfactory response. I appreciate that this can come across as somewhat process driven however it is important for consistency and helps should you continue to be dissatisfied having exhausted the process and wish to refer the matter to the Local Government Ombudsman. For this reason I am treating this as a Stage2 response.
Mr Cunningham refused to answer your question about the height in September so it became a complaint at Stage 1 and it was definitely not resolved when he attempted to pass it back to the Chair of the TGA. Logic if nothing else indicates that after after that meeting it must therefore be at Stage 2 and Mr Mansbridge at Stage 3. What Mr Mansbridge was actually doing, was to overwrite all the corrections made in the second stage, with the misinformation given in the both the first and second stages.
1. he passed the letter correcting the misinformation about the height of the shed given in the local press back to a conpleted Stage 2;
2. the letter 2nd May was about the fact that he had ignored the letter of the 4th April. It also suggested that the conduct of his staff left much to be desired: “If I had followed the suggestions by these officers there would have been no admission by the planning office that the slipway shed on River Drive had not been built to plan” and no need for any escalation to the next stage (mislabelled as 2 by Mr Mansbridge);
3. the letter of the 9th May explained why there was no truth in his statement made in response to our Petition: “The approved dimensions of the steelwork are: Proposed height 15.5m at the River Drive end”.
Not only that he repeats it in his Faux Stage 2: That must be the plan which the Development Corporation was referring to when it granted planning permission in 1996. The height of the steelwork at River Drive is clearly marked as 12.5m+3m: