Category Archives: 2019

To Cllr Hamilton: 23-Dec-19

Fwd: Complaint: 248789 - Unplanned Development on River Drive
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: 23/12/2019 (11:00:46 BST)
To: Cllr Angela Hamilton
Cc: Emma Lewell-Buck, Nicola Robason, Cllr David Francis, Alison Hoy

Dear Angela and Everybody,

Seasons greetings. Please see the response from the Council’s Monitoring Officer. Please note it is seven months after I asked her predecessor the same question. Better late than never.
It confirms that the Council did not give retrospective planning permission for the slipway shed on River Drive but beggars the question why did UK Docks tell you and Emma they had been given permission for it. The answer is in the third paragraph of my email below:

We also knew that the shed had been built nearly 3m taller than permitted before the 5th frame went up but the Council said otherwise and misinformed the Ombudsman about it. The reason for this is now known: firstly to hide misconduct and the second to deflect enquiries and they had been doing that for 5 years.

Notice that Nicola has avoided the problem that has beset them since the second frame of the shed went up in September 2013 and that is the shed is 3 meters taller than planned. They even misled the Ombudsman about it.

The complainant says the shed is also 3 metres higher than it should be The Council says it is not. There is no fault in how the Council decided the shed is the permitted height.

I have added her response to the list of Evasions and Denials and there is now a link to it on the home page of theharbourview.co.uk. It looks like nearly everyone who had dealings with UK Docks becomes averse to the truth and Nicola is the latest to suffer from this contagion and one cannot expect her to break ranks with her peer group.
That is what Building Control expect and they are ultimately responsible for this farce. I’ll continue to put the evidence forward until the matter is dealt with by the Chief Executive.
It is to him, that Mr Harding ought to have referred the matter if he did not wish to respond to the matter in May 2019, not to a new appointee who can be kept in the dark. That she does not even know that the shed is 3m too tall confirms this.
Mr Swales does not respond to any correspondence about the shed and that is why I have copied Alison into the list, at least she can make him aware that he is being talked about. It is a small courtesy.

Happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year.
Michael Dawson.

From NR: 19-Dec-19

RE: Complaint: 248789 - Unplanned Development on River Drive
From: Nicola Robason
Date: 19/12/2019 (09:56:34 AM GMT)
To:   mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Message Log: Forwarded on 23/12/2019 11:00:46 AM to: Cllr Angela Hamilton, Emma Lewell-Buck, Nicola Robason, Cllr David Francis, Alison Hoy and local residents. 

Dear Mr Dawson
Thank you for your recent emails and your letter dated 5 December 2019.

I can confirm that I am the Council’s Monitoring Officer. In that capacity, I have read and considered the information you have provided in relation to UK Docks and River Drive and specifically your request for information.

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.

I am also aware of the history of this development that goes back some years with the original planning application being determined and approved by the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation in their capacity as Planning Authority at that time. The Council has recognised that the development of the shed on the site is unauthorised but concluded some time ago, in accordance with the Constitution, that no enforcement action would be taken as this was not in the public interest as there would be no change in the level of perceived harm suffered. * This decision and the reasoning behind it was communicated to residents by the Council.

I understand that all complaints procedures regarding this matter have been exhausted both internally within the Council and externally.

Many thanks

Nicola
Nicola Robason
Head of Corporate & External Affairs and Monitoring Officer
South Tyneside Council

* decision made by Building Inspector, September 2013. Not corrected by Principal Planning Officer a few days later, nor by any one since.

South Tyneside Council and the Local Government Ombudsman

From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: 19/06/2019 (21:08:05 GMT)
To: Mike Harding
Cc: Andrew Tilbury, Alison Hoy, Gill Hayton (Solicitor), Cllr Angela Hamilton, Cllr David Francis, Cllr Anglin, Emma Lewell-Buck MP, Stephen Hepburn MP, Graeme Watson, George Mansbridge, Peter Cunningham, Garry Simmonette
Bcc: 24 Local Residents

Attachment: DearMH19June19.pdf

Dear Mr Harding and Everybody,

Please see attached signed letter. It should be self explanatory. I knew from complaining about 71 Greens Place that the Council were misusing their complaints procedure and using the Ombudsman as a hidden fourth stage of it to hide malpractice, bad planning decisions etc. and it was clear from the start that they were going to do the same thing with UK Docks shed.

If the Planning Officer who measured the shed had any evidence to support his view that the shed was approved we would have seen it long before we even considered resurrecting the Tyne Gateway Assn and certainly before the charade of the Town Hall meeting in November 2013.

It should of dawned on me before Alison’s email of 9-Dec-15 that they would use the Ombudsman’s findings to misinform other Residents, Councillors, MPs, Newspapers etc. but there you go, one does not expect people to lie to the Ombudsman.

Regards,
Michael Dawson

AH and Misrepresentation /misinformation given by South Tyneside Council

From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: 20/05/2019 (09:26:16 GMT)
To:   Alison.Hoy@southtyneside.gov.uk
Cc:   Andrew Tilbury, Cllr David Francis, Cllr Angela Hamilton, Cllr Anglin, Mike Harding, Peter Cunningham, Garry Simmonette, Gill Hayton (Solicitor), Emma Lewell-Buck MP, Stephen Hepburn MP, Stuart Wright
Bcc: mick.dawson
Attachment: STDandLGO26Jan16.pdf (355 KB) Advice from Solicitor.

Dear Alison,

Please see my email below and answer the question. In the meantime please forward this letter to the Head of Legal Services along with Mr Tilbury’s advice given to me on the 26th January 2016 which I have attached. What had prompted me to seek his advice was your email to me of 9th December 2015[1] and please forward a copy of that to the Head of Legal Services as well if he is not Mike Harding.

Mr Tilbury said it was not really a planning matter at all, more a case of criminal fraud but the police were unlikely to take it up because they tend to refer planning matters to the civil court and that could get very expensive and Mr Cunningham and Co. would get away with incompetence or something like it. This is why we agreed that ‘misleading the Local Government Ombudsman’ (Ombudsman) was the best way forward.

I did write a draft letter to Mr Tilbury but it was 10 pages, and I had not covered everything so I thought it might be better to write to the CEO myself with a couple of the most obvious of the misrepresentations.

Your email confirmed that, not only was the Council using the Ombudsman to cover up malpractice, corruption of their own complaints procedure but to also use the Ombudsman’s wrong assessment to misdirect anybody who tried to find out why the Council gave permission for the UK Docks to relocate their business in a primarily residential part of South Shields.

They also use the findings to mislead anyone who enquires why they were allowed to build a much larger structure than that for which they were given permission such as my MP, Marie Trevelyan, and is second point in your email 9-Dec-15:

We have also responded to a further enquiry made to the Council via your then local MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan, dated 1 June 2015, which claimed you had not been able to locate any details from the Council on why the shed had been approved despite the breach in planning conditions, even though at that time you had received complaint responses from both the Council and the Ombudsman.

What I said in that letter was; “You have not specified that the stated height (15.5m) is of the river end of the shelter and it is likely that, Mr Swales, if he follows the arguments of the Planning Manager and the Head of Development Services before him, will say it refers to the road end.” I followed this with a detailed explanation of why it referred to the river end and finally by; “If Mr Swales provides any new plans to show you that I am wrong in my assessment of the development on River Drive by UK Docks please let me know.”

Mr Swales did not provide any plans, new or old, because they do not exist. To get round this problem, Mrs Johnson who replied on his behalf makes out that we were wrong about the height;

The matters and allegations raised by your constituent are well documented and have been subject to a number of enquiries from Mr Dawson and other local residents over a lengthy period of time. The matter was ultimately referred by way of complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman, the outcome of which was delivered on 14 April 2015

The relabelling of our observations and or complaints as allegations appears to have become standard practice since Mrs Johnson replaced Mr Mansbridge in the ‘Complaints Procedure’ and I think it more than coincidence that that you now label my complaint that the enclosure is nearly 3m taller than planned as an ‘earlier allegation’.

This neatly brings me to the first point you were trying to make in your email of the 9th December [1] and the primary purpose of misleading the Ombudsman. To hide malpractice:

Your email of 4th December refers to not being satisfied with the responses to the second part of your earlier contact to the team on 30 September. This was regarding the planning enforcement aspect of the existing boat repair shed. This matter has been investigated fully by the Council through its corporate complaints procedure. The complaint was not upheld and was also considered and decided by the Local Government Ombudsman who found no fault with the Council’s decision.

The email of the 4th of December was written because Mr Simmonette, the planning officer promoting the expansion of the boatyard, had not responded to my email of of the 30th September.

In the earlier one I had explained the shed was a meter wider and 3 meters taller than planned and said: “You appear to be accepting an application to extend a structure that does not have planning permission.” In the email of the 4th of December I went into much greater detail backing up my claim about the height of the enclosure by reference to the approved drawings 8296/2 and 8296/14 and positing: “The request for permission to extend it by 25% appears to be an attempt bypass the planning regulations, see condition 2 in the original grant of permission.”

If you had checked what was being said in these two emails you would have realised that I was advising Mr Simmonette that the shed was too high and if he did not believe it just look at the approved drawings. There was nothing about enforcement and it appears he told you that because he did not want to admit I was right about the height. In this he was following a trend developed by Mr Cunningham in September 2013 when we first asked him about the planned height of the enclosure.

From what I could gather he, Mr Cunningham, was telling people at first that the enclosure had been approved while some of us had worked out that it had not in various ways. Our main objection was that it was 3 meters higher than planned. Some knew it was also wider than planned, thought it was inappropriately located and thought that the change of use breached the conditions of the grant.

Now it turns out that all of these are true but the Council/Ombudsman have found for UK Docks on all of them but the one thing they cannot skirt around is the fact that it is built 2.7 meters taller than planned and you and others get round this by implying that were lying or making allegations when it is the Council that are at fault in this respect. (Allegation: a claim or assertion that someone has done something illegal or wrong, typically one made without proof).

I first came across this sort of libel in a copy of a letter to my MP from Mrs Johnson dated 25th June 2015 [2] in which she suggests that not only me but the other protestors are wrong about the enclosure. Notice that she does not have the grace to send me a copy of attachment 6 and I did not see what she was saying about us for six months It was not an oversight judging by her comment at the bottom and when I saw the copy you sent me in January 2016 I realised why Anne-Marie’s office had not responded to my enquires and what a nasty piece of work Mrs Johnson was.

I think we are entitled to know what else was said about us by Mrs Johnson in her letter and the five other attachments. Please forward them to me under the freedom of information act.

The letter of the 5th October was Mrs J Johnson’s 2nd response to my letter to the Chief Executive of the 8th July 2016 [3] about some of the misrepresentations presented to the Ombudsman and their source. Mrs Johnson earlier responded on his behalf by saying that there was no evidence of ‘deliberate’ misinformation having been made to the Ombudsman  [4]. Misinformation by its very nature is deliberate and she contradicts what Mr Tilbury says in his letter about what the Council have told the Ombudsman.

She carries out her threat in her letter of the 5th October and my response of the 2nd September 2016 and its accompanying letter to Customer Advocacy have remained unanswered all this time and UK Docks have extended their shed without planning permission onto footings laid in 2001.

This appears to be the real reason for closing down conversation about the enclosure. The plans for its extension, submitted by the agent Gary Craig, relied on the Council supporting the false premise that structure signed off in June 2014 had planning permission.

As for Mrs Johnson reasons for imposing her ‘omerta’ let me just refer you to the last point in your letter of the 9th December were spurious to say the least. The emails exchanged between us in July 2015 were about requests for information, not complaints (9th Dec, last paragraphs). It so happens the information you provided, and I thanked you for it, showed that it was the Council corrupting their complaints procedure, not I.

If you look at my letter of the 2nd September bottom of first page, you will see a statement that I had already been to a solicitor and received a response. The ball’s in your court. I see no need to engage Mr Tilbury again and I suggest someone from your legal section attends to my email of the 2nd September 2016 and discusses the matter with Mr Tilbury if they so wish.

Kind regards
Michael Dawson

Links: 
------
[1] http://theharbourview.co.uk/docs/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2015/12/FromAH09Dec.pdf
[2] http://theharbourview.co.uk/docs/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2015/12/HJtoAMT25Jun15.pdf
[3] http://theharbourview.co.uk/blog/letter-to-ceo/
[4] http://theharbourview.co.uk/docs/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2015/12/ReplyHJfor-CEO1Aug16.pdf

Letter to Monitoring Officer: 9-Apr-19

 Neither acknowledged nor answered

Amble
9th April 2019

Dear Mr Harding,

Councillor Anglin, UK Docks and the Enclosure on River Drive

Gill Hayton’s response to my complaint about Cllr Anglin and the Town Hall meeting of 25-Nov-13 is not sound but she does say I may ask you to review her decision if I am dissatisfied.

Her decision appears to be based on three misrepresentations given to the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) by a Senior Planning Officer of South Tyneside Council:

LGOGill Hayton
121. The Council accepts these measurements were wrong.5. The Council later accepted that the measurements as taken in 2013 were incorrect.
231. The applicant stated the height at this end as 12.5 metres plus 3 metres making 15.5 metres.6. The Ombudsman found no fault in how the Council
determined the permitted height of the landward end
of the development was 12.5 metres plus 3 metres.
323. It decided the degree of
departure from the plans – less
than one metre – was “non-material.”
5. The Council decided not to take enforcement action
against the developer and considered the degree of
departure from the grant of planning permission was
“non-material” given the overall scale of the building.

The paragraph numbers in Ms Hayton’s response have been added by me. Her statements are virtually straight lifts from the Ombudsman’s findings and the first is a complete fabrication. The measurements were not wrong. When I wrote to Cllr Anglin on the 16-Dec-13, I was just
confirming what the Principal Planning Officer (PPO) found 3 months before. Similarly with the height and the formal complaint of 10-Jan-14.

The second is a fraudulent misrepresentation of the plans and if Ms Hayton had troubled to look at the authorised plan 8296/2 she would have seen that the Senior Planning Officer was deliberately misleading the Ombudsman. When I first raised a formal complaint with Planning Enquiries on 10-Jan-2014 and pointed out that the enclosure (shed) was a meter wider and 3 meters taller than permitted, I got this response from the PPO:
The queries that you raise are not new, indeed I have been repeating my response to them for some time now, and you will recall that I explained the planning aspect of the Council’s position to you regarding this development during our meeting. May I therefore suggest that you speak with the Chair of the residents group in respect of the points that you have raised below, as these have already been discussed and explained. If you are still not satisfied with the Council’s response then you should use the Council’s complaints procedure.

Principal Planning Officer, 13-Jan-14

and 2 days later from his Manager:

Approved Drawings – The following are details of the relevant drawings in the Council’s possession. The drawing that was submitted on 11th April 1996 with the application is numbered 8296/1A. That shows the overall height of the structure as 15.5m above the foundation level at the landward end.” . . . . . “The dimensions of the steelwork have been checked on site and they are in accordance with the measurements shown on the approved drawings. The variation in the angle of the pillars
is not considered to be material.

Planning Manager, 15-Jan-14

Note: – the measurements were made by the PPO on 17-Sep-13 and the complaint on 10-Jan-14. 8296/1A does show a height of 15.5m at the landward end but it is a mistake on an unauthorised drawing. What the Planning Manager does not say is that the river end is shown as 15.5m as well and that is not a mistake as confirmed by the authorised drawing 8296/2. The copy of 8296/2 sent to the PPO had the details about the height removed and did not show the authorisation stamp of the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation.

The third was an invention by the Senior Planning Officer which I should not have to explain except to say that the increase in width was a material consideration when the measurement was made on 17-Sep-13.

Cllr Anglin had promised to find out for us if the shed was built to the permitted height but failed to do so. The drawings supposedly seen at meeting suggested that the shed was in fact higher by nearly 3m, though it could also be used misleadingly to say otherwise. See top of page. Added to that, he returned to us with the lie that that there was no variation in width. I had not told him but we had proof that the shed is actually nearly 3m higher than permitted by the Council publishing drawing 8296/14 on 10-Dec-13, so we can also reasonably claim that we were misled (height and width) when the PP O asked Cllr Anglin to relay the message:
Hello – I confirmed at our meeting with Mr Dawson and others on 25th Sept Nov 2013 that I had measured the width and length of the ground floor external footprint and height of the structure and that these dimensions were all in accordance with the attached approved drawing and planning permission.

Councillor Anglin, 19-Dec-13

Cllr Anglin and the PPO had already lost any credibility when they agreed to drop any consideration of whether the shed had been built to plan (condition 2) from the agenda:
Cllr Anglin has spoken to Graeme and informed him that he is meeting with Peter Cunningham next week with a view to clarifying that procedures have been followed correctly and ascertain future proposals for site. It was suggested that someone from the committee should attend this meeting; Graeme will contact Cllr Anglin and ask if the committee can be represented. Graeme and Mick to attend, and others if appropriate.

Minutes of the Tyne Gateway Assn, 15-Nov-13

Graeme and I did attend and Ken Haig turned up as well. They may have been happy to accept the word of the PPO but I was not and I have not excused Cllr Anglin for including me with them when he said: “The Exec representatives of the Group accepted that the construction had been made legally as per drawings seen.” They may have been happy to support UK Docks but I was not.

I went and measured the width; Graeme Watson, by implication Mr Haig, and the PPO, all questioned how I had managed to do it without gaining access to the yard. This has to be made very clear to everyone involved and until I get an apology from Cllr Anglin I will continue to remind
everyone that he is to blame for the shed being there in its present form. When I get the apology the blame will then rest entirely on the PPO, he has left it a bit late to shift the blame onto UK Docks.

We could see from the drawings provided that the height was not in accordance with the plans but until we had an approved drawing any argument was pointless. I’m surprised that the PPO and others could not see the logic in this but then they, UK Docks/Council, needed the error on an unapproved drawing to justify their view that the shed has been built to the approved height. It appears that I did not make this point clear to Gill Hayton:
Drawings 1A or B could be said to represent the approved plans if the height dimension on the river end, 15.5m, is accepted as true rather than that on the landward end. Bearing in mind both of these drawings give a planned width of 12.2m one could reasonably say that the shed was a meter wider than permission allowed from 2001 and 2.7m taller than permission allowed from the 5th or 6th September 2013.

Michael Dawson to Gill Hayton, 11-Dec-18

There is no confusion about the width, the planned width is 12.2m and found by the PPO to be 13.1m though this was denied at the meeting, then by Cllr Anglin and again by the PPO and lastly the Planning Manager. This was put right by the Head of Development Services in his letter to the Petitioners:
Apart from the width these dimensions are either entirely in accordance with the approved plan, or subject to such minor deviation that they are properly categorised as non-material changes.

Mr G Mansbridge, 2-May 2014

It got changed, 1st to: no material harm in a Stage 3 response and eventually to paragraph 23 of the Ombudsman’s findings; “It decided the degree of departure from the plans – less than one metre –
was “non-material.” This is a very good illustration of how the Council manipulate their own complaints procedure and the good offices of the Ombudsmen to cover for the fact that the PPO did not tell the Enforcement Officer about the breach planning control.

UK Docks had made the footings wider in 2001 and told the Council that they had been approved and the issue should have been sorted out when the PPO measured the structure in September 2013. The PPO had the opportunity to concede the point about the shed being wider than planned at the meeting in November 2013 but he declined. He was given another chance when I wrote to him via Cllr Anglin a few weeks later but he continued to deny that the shed was wider than planned.

It looks like neither UK Docks nor the PPO had worked out, now that the pillars were upright, they pointed directly to the footings. It also appears that they did not realise that the removal of the vital dimensions from the left hand edge of 8296/2 made no difference because one could still gauge the planned height shed from the gradient. Maybe they had not spotted that the vital dimensions on 8296/2 give lie to the proposition that there is no or only slight variation in height as well.

When UK Docks got the OK to restart work on the shed in January 2014, I realised that no-one had actually put in a formal complaint to the Council about the shed not being compliant with the second condition and that the meeting at the Town Hall had been had only been a window dressing exercise for the benefit of UK Docks and or the Council.

In this context please ask Ms Hayton to forward you, her copy of the email that I sent to Cllr Hamilton on the 27-Mar-19. The email included my original complaint of 10-Jan-14 and a letter explaining the whys and wherefores of the UK Dock’s/Council’s dishonesty.

I invited her, Ms Hayton, 11-Dec-18, to look at drawings 8296/2 and ../14 but it is apparent that she has either not looked at them or misunderstood what they mean or else she could not, in all honestly, have replied as she did. I now invite you to do the same and say what is the planned height (authorised) of the shed on River Drive and what is to be done with my complaint of 10-Jan-14.

Yours sincerely
Michael Dawson

Subject: Cllr A: Slipway Development – River Drive

From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: Wed, March 27, 2019 5:40 pm
To: "Angela Hamilton" 
Cc: "Andrew Tilbury" "Emma Lewell-Buck MP" "Stephen Hepburn MP" "Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP" "Cllr Anglin" "Cllr McMillan" "Gill Hayton (Solicitor)" "Customer Advocates" "Fiona Stanton" "Graeme Watson" "Evening Chronicle"

Dear Angela,

I have retrieved my original complaint from the ‘bin’ this morning. The mighty servers at Microsoft have been looking after it for me for all these years. I would resubmit it but would only get a response similar to the one from Gill Hayton, 12-Dec-18 or one like Emma relayed, 6-Sep-17, whenhad I pointed out another one of Cllrs Anglin’s transgressions: The previous issues relating to the boat yard have in fact now been looked at by the Local Government Ombudsman and they found noissue with the yard or anything relating to its development. Unfortunately, the Ombudsman’s decision cannot be re-visited.

The attached letter started of as a response to Monitoring (putting it in writing to her boss Mr M Harding was not an option considering how much ink and paper I would have to use especially as, on current form it is going to get ‘binned’). I quickly realised that I would immediately fall into the trap set for me by Gill Hayton. The bait is the misinformation about the height coupled with the invitation to write again to the Monitoring Officer and the trap is sprung by writing to them again. It is a set piece and was used on me when I complained about the development of 71 Greens place. Then, I did not gather what was going on. I was more prepared for it when it was tried by Planning in late 2013/early 2014, the bait being repetition of misinformation given at the meeting by Mr Cunningham and the trap being sprung when I wrote to his Manager. Mr Atkinson re-baited the trap with a rather wordy version of of what Mr Cunningham wrote: “The approved dimensions of the steelwork are: Proposed height 15.5m at the River Drive end.” and invited me to write to the Head of Development Services, where, as you can see, the trap was reloaded.

I tried various devices to avoid this trap but they just keep on baiting with variations of that lie until we get Gill Hayton quoting the Ombudsman directly. I did take Mr Tilbury’s advice and wrote to the Chief Executive but a ‘new’ complaint was not raised the reason given being that; “There is no evidence to suggest that there has been deliberate misinformation provided by Council officers to the Local Government Ombudsman”. I personally would believe Mr Tilbury rather than someone chosen by the Chief Executive of South Tyneside Council.

It was actually the second inspector for the Ombudsman that said; “I consider that your latest complaint remains that of your previous complaint which has already been determined (whether or not to your satisfaction) and the opportunity to request a review of that decision has passed.” Notice he said nothing about the Council misleading the Ombudsman, but that I was too late in reporting it. I believe the period to challenge what a Council has told them is now a month. The shed is still 3m taller and 1m wider than planned and the Council have still not responded to my complaint made in January 2014. Please ask them nicely to pull their finger out and respond properly to it – see complaint below.

Kindly yours
Michael.

UK Docks

Subject:UK Docks
From:"Cllr Angela Hamilton" <cllr.angela.hamilton@southtyneside.gov.uk>
Date: Wed, March 6, 2019 11:46 am
To: David and Julie, Melanie and I.
Cc: David Francis and, Emma Lewell-Buck MP.

This email has been classified as: NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED

Hello All

As you are aware myself and Emma Lewell-Buck MP met with UK Docks on Friday lastweek when I raised a number of concerns on behalf of residents. I apologise forthe slight delay in responding but I needed to clarify a couple of points with officers first to make sure I answered as many of your concerns as possible.

Background
UK Docks are the owners of a boat yard on River Drive which is the companiesHeadquarters. The main services provided from the River Drive location includerepairs for boats and small ships, a marine supply store, workshop facilities and base for staff who repair and maintain ships in various locations around theworld. There are no repairs to large ships or shipbuilding on the site as the dock is not large enough for this. The business provides jobs in the local area and offers traineeships and apprenticeships.

Issues raised
Since UK Docks opened the site on River Drive a number of concerns have been raised by residents about the operation of the premises. My response to each of these issues are below:

Containers: As I believe you are already aware the containers have now been moved. Some of the containers will be removed from the site while others have been moved to another location on the site which does not overlook any houses. There was a delay in these being moved due to delays in building works being completed (see below) but hopefully this issue is now resolved.

Jetties: Although there were proposals for jetties included in the plans there has never been any confirmation of if and when these would be built. At the moment there are no plans to build the jetties. I have asked UK Docks to let meknow if this position changes.

Lighting: UK Docks confirmed that there were some problems with lighting when the office building first opened. This was due to a fault with the automatic lights which were not turning off when the building was empty. As I am sure youcan imagine this was a concern for the company as well as local residents. The fault has been fixed and I have been reassured that the only lights that are on overnight are security lights that are required on sites such as this. Given that there is street lighting in the areas these lights are unlikely to have anyadverse impact on the area.

Building works: The work to build the office building was delayed as the builders contracted to do this went out of business meaning UK Docks had to complete the work themselves using local contractors. The main building work isnow complete so hopefully there will be no further issues relating to this.

Car park: UK Docks have told me that they will be carrying out the works on thecar park over the next few weeks. While this may mean there will be some increase in noise for a short period of time I have been assured that this will not be carried out early in the morning, late in the evening or on Sundays. There may be a need to carry out some work on Saturday mornings but this will be kept to a minimum. Once the car park has been completed this will create a gap between houses and the area where work is carried out which should assist in reducing noise levels.

Noise reduction: The noise reduction boards that are currently in place are not MDF but a heavy duty material used in the marine industry and are seen as the most effective in reducing noise. UK Docks are not opposed to planting trees along the border and will consider this but there are a number of issues that need to be considered before this is agreed including: type of trees; impact ofplanting trees on surround properties as it is important that anything planted does not cause problems for the foundations; and whether planting trees would help reduce noise levels. This is something we can discuss with UK Docks once the car park is finished.

Privacy: Having visited the site and attended a meeting in the office building Idon’t believe there are any issues. There is one window that faces the rear of the houses on Harbour View but it is virtually impossible to see into either the houses or the gardens from this window due to the angle of the building and the window. If you are still concerned please let me know and I will contact UK Docks to see if there is anything that can be done to provide you with additional reassurance.

Planning: While I understand the concerns you have raised about the buildings deviating from the original plans I cannot see any way to resolve this issue. You have said that the building is slightly wider and higher than the original plans but I have not been able to find out anything about why this happened. As I wasn’t a Councillor at the time I was not involved in any of the discussions so can’t confirm whether this was agreed before or after building works were completed and it wouldn’t be possible to reduce the building and it isn’t financially viable to remove and rebuild it. I believe that many of the issues may have been caused by a lack of communication between UK Docks, the Council and residents which is something I hope will not be an issue going forward.

UK Docks are happy to talk about any concerns going forward and, if you would like me to, I can facilitate discussions as and when required. I realise this may not be resolve all of your past concerns but hopefully it will allow us to build a relationship to prevent similar problems arising in the future.If you have any questions or need any more information please don’t hesitate to get in touch.RegardsCouncillor Angela HamiltonBeacon and Bents WardSouth Tyneside CouncilEmail: Cllr.angela.hamilton@southtyneside.gov.uk