of the complaint to LGO about UK Docks Development on River Drive.
I complain to South Tyneside Council, on January 10th 2014, about continued working on what appears to be unplanned Slipway Cover(shed), to planning enquiries and conclude:-
When looking at the three drawings and the photo I have forwarded, it is obvious that there is a complete miss match. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the current structure has not been built to the ‘approved plans’ as provided by Council, ie 1A,1B nor does the drawing of the cladding/door fixing detail match what exists, for example the structure is 3 metres higher and 1 metre wider than shown on 8296/14.
Please will you answer the following questions:
Why are there no date stamped and approved plans available on the planning portal?
Why are there no plans for the current structure?
As the applicant has not discharged condition 2 why is there no retrospective planning application?
Why when I have been provided with a drawing dated 1996 were residents informed Council was not involved at this time?
18 months later:
the first draft from the Inspector for the Local Government Ombudsman appears and I complain to her that she has not said anything about the height and my first impression was that it was dictated it to her by a senior officer in the Planning Office but she does amend her report and the summary is amended by the addition of: “The complainant says the shed is also 3 metres higher than it should be. The Council says it is not”.
I then send a six page email (summarised in posts) with numerous attachments explaining why I thought the shed was built 3m too high and after 3 weeks, not the 3 months to complete her first draft, the summary is updated, “he had built” is amended to “the developer built” and we, the Council and I, get:
The Ombudsman’s final decision, 15-Apr-2015:
Summary: This complaint is not upheld. In 2013 a developer resumed building a boat shed for which he had planning permission and had started building in 2001. Local residents complained but the Council found the developer could still build the shed. However, the developer built it almost a metre wider than he should have done. There is no evidence of fault in the way the Council dealt with the breach of planning control and its decision not to take enforcement action. It kept residents informed throughout the process. 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 should have asked her to make clear a sequence of events but I did not spot the significance of what she was saying in paragraphs 21 and 22 as I was concentrating on the height issue.
21. The Council considered if the building accorded with the approved plans. The
planning officer originally assigned the case considered the developers were
building the boat shed to the measurements in the 1996 plans. Mr X says he told
residents this at a public meeting. The Council accepts these measurements were
wrong.
I repeated what the planning officer told me at a meeting in the Town Hall on 25th Nov 2013 to a meeting of Local Residents some 6 hours later. I did not believe what I had been told but I did not know the dimensions of the structure so I had to assume that what was being said was true. They were known to the Council in September but I some trouble in obtaining the figures from the Planning Office.
22. A more senior officer checked the measurements; he found the width at ground
level was just less than one metre wider than the permission allowed. The
Council decided the developer had not built the shed entirely in accordance with
the approved plans and so had not met condition 2. The Council decided this was
a breach of planning control.
When I appealed to the Mr Cunningham’s Manager, Mr Atkinson he repeated what Mr Cunningham had been saying, “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” in an email 15th Jan.
I asked the planning Manager what the actual dimensions of the shed were and he gave them: length = 22.252m, width = 13.1m, h = 15.5m (18m at river end), email 28th Jan. I believe this was the first time that the Council had said what the actual heights were to any of the objectors. They had known the dimensions of the shed since September.
In her finding:
34. I have seen the 1996 plans. On plan 1/B the applicant has written the proposed
elevations at the inland end as 12.5 metres plus 3 metres. Mr X says the Council
should not have taken the applicant’s word for this.
This drawing 8296/1B was: 1) not authorised; 2) produced in 1997; and 3) says the other end of the shed is 12.5+3m as well. The submission of the drawing by UK Docks to STC on 6th Sept and its use to show the shed was the planned height was probably a fraudulent act when one considers that the agents had produced a drawing in August showing a structure about 3m lower.
Does the submission of it to the LGO or in Mr Cunningham’s presentation to the Councillor in November repeat the fraud? The use of 8296/1A (1A and 1B are interchangeable email 28th Jan).
In her findings, about 8296/14 she says:
37. Mr X says plan 14 shows 15.5 metres as the river end height. The Council has explained to Mr X why this is not the case. The developers submitted plan 14 in 2013 as part of their application to discharge condition 4. The Development Corporation did not approve plan 14 in 1996 and it is not a plan subject to condition 2. It shows how the developers intend to attach the end panels. One drawing shows an end with the panels in place to provide an impression of the final appearance. The drafter has not specified which end this is and the drawings are not to scale.
She has not paid attention to what I said to her about 8296/14 in my explanation and what is worse she has repeated two specious comments made by the Planning Manager.
- “The drafter has not specified which end this is” – it says on the drawing that the strips can be drawn back to allow boats in. The boats come up the slipway from the river.
- “and the drawings are not to scale” – she is repeating the Planning Manager 13th Feb – “The engineer chose to show a gable elevation of the structure (not drawn to scale) on the same drawing.” The Planning Manager is well out of order saying this. No architect, and less still an engineer, would have drawn out of scale and if the agents knew that this was being said of them I think they would have demanded an apology.
This should be enough to convince anyone that the LGO has given much more consideration the misinformation fed her by the Senior Planning Officer than to the plain facts as presented by me.