Review of the Shed and Corruption Series

Avoidance of the Truth by the Chief Executive.

To get round the truth about the height , the person appointed by Mr Swales to respond, first accuses us of making allegations, then says:- “The Ombudsman did not uphold the complaint, finding that the Council had acted appropriately in our approach relating to the planning application and subsequent action, full details of which would have been sent by their office to Mr Dawson.

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While I suspected that was why the giving misinformation to the Ombudsman this was the first time I had seen in writing that they would use the fact that my complaint was not upheld to lie about it to anyone making enquiries about UK Docks’ shed. It is so simple. No-one is going to believe that they would be content to tell the Ombudsman outright lies to paint a false picture of a situation.

To get round the truth about the height, the person appointed by Mr Swales to respond, first accuses us of making allegations, then says:- “The Ombudsman did not uphold the complaint, finding that the Council had acted appropriately in our approach relating to the planning application and subsequent action, full details of which would have been sent by their office to Mr Dawson.

In 2017, the second Government Inspector for the Ombudsman conflates the complaint that STC have been giving misinformation to the Ombudsman with the complaint that UK Dock is taller and wider than planned.

In 2018, a Council Solicitor defends a Councillor’s action re UK Dockswith examples of the misinformation given to the Ombudsman by STC and looks like she has been told that the good citizens (at least 130) have been making allegations about the height.

In 2019, UK Docks start telling people that they got their bigger shed by putting in a claim for the extra headroom retrospectively in May and it took about 7 months for the Council to confirm they had not.

Apparently the Director of UK Docks was asked by a Councillor to produce plans that backed his claim the shed had been built to approved plans and as there were none so he made the excuse that the extra headroom had been granted retrospectively. By contrast, Mr Swales, when asked something similar four years earlier, instructed his staff to accuse us of making allegations as his excuse for not being able to produce any plans and a year later 2016 he instructing his Corporate Lead to misapply Section F of the staff code to deliver a personal attack on me for being unable to produce plans to support the claim that the shed had been built to approved plans by the Council.

In 2020, I return a call from the MP for South Shields office while Emma is down in Parliament of from a Mr K Palmer and I will deal with that in Shed and Corruption – Part 16.

In 2021 I decided to review all my emails on a timeline I shared with STC, its Cllrs, the residents, UK Docks and the LGO and had just posted the latest Part of Shed and Corruption to Cllr Francis when I got a copy of the latest edition of the Council’s policy handling complaints at the end of April along with the decision to continue shoving the issue of the shed’s height under the Carpet by Ms Abbott on the 29th April 2021.

Who instructed her to do it, it was not Mr Swales, he had retired six months before, in September 2020 and it looks like whoever was in control of the Town Hall had decided to continue with the lie about the shed’s height in April 2021.

Ms Hoy shoved the issue even further under the carpet when again she misapplied the Complaints Policy on April 29th this year and repeated that the Council’s complaints procedure had been exhausted. The complaint that the shed was too tall was exhausted in February 2014 when the Planning Manager admitted that it was too tall.

M Dawson
1 Jun 2022

This entry was posted in Abuse of Complaints System, Corruption, Denial, Evasion. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Review of the Shed and Corruption Series

  1. Mick Dawson says:

    When I said “Tyne Slipway and Engineering and its owner, as the only obstacle to the closure of Tyne Dock, in a very powerful position because they had to find a new home on the Tyne and there was only one viable option” I was was rather downplaying the argument as the conditions under which the Wilsons acquired the ownership Tyne Slipway and Engineering business, the one off River Drive, were shrouded in secrecy.
    However they blotted their copy book by giving a set of drawings to the Principal Planning Officer of South Tyneside Council to falsely claim that they had approval for what was to become UK Docks’ shed on River Drive. All they had to do then, was to sit back and let the Council’s Planning Office and their Managers make sure that ‘due’ process did not interfere with their plans for the shed we see today.

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