The Council's Solicitor in an email of 14-Dec-18 provided a list of emails that I had written giving some background to my complaint about Councillor Anglin. She said "I refer to your emails dated 19 September, 1, 12, 15, 22 (x2), and 26 October, 14, 20 and 22 November, and 11 December 2018 concerning your complaint about Councillor John Anglin.", then considered few if any of the points made in any of them. Her response was based on what a Senior Planner told the Ombudsman, very little of which was based on reality.
19 September: the basic complaint was that he promised to find out the planned height and width of the shed the shed but he failed, and not only that, he accepted what we had been told in spite of being advised by me that we had been mislead. We were told that the shed was compliant when it was not.
1 October: principally a thank you to the MP and take the opportunity to flesh some detail with reference to the TGA, and add that the Ombudsman had been misinformed about the extra width being “non-material” and the sequence of events. The sequence had been altered to make it appear that the Case Officer did not know about the extra width when he told us that the shed was compliant. He measured it two months before the fateful meeting.
12 October: email to Ward Councillor, AH, thanking her for her interest and pointing out that an article in the local press was misleading (UK Docks were providing more jobs on Teesside, not Tyneside). I also introduced the idea that they were hiding the extra width because it was a material consideration. I also pointed out that I had not had an acknowledgement from the Council (more than 3 weeks had elapsed since 19 September).
Encoded acknowledgement received from a Council Solicitor 2 hours later.
15 October: apology to the Secretary of the TGA (2013-?). I had referred to their EGM and subsequent meeting minutes to establish the facts behind what was going on between the Principal Planning Officer (PPO), the Chair of the TGA and Cllr Anglin. The main point of the email was to show that shed was a meter wider was than planned was known to the PPO but was being hidden from the residents. The second point was related: Cllr Anglin and the PPO had changed the agenda of the proposed meeting from establishing whether the shed had been built to plan to whether correct procedures had been followed. In effect Cllr Anglin and the other ward The Ward Councillors had become part of the wall of silence.
22 October: the first was missing the Subject or Title, the second a copy: it was a continuation of my email of the 12th to the Ward Councillor, AH, adding some detail. Chiefly emphasising the point about the width having been measured (13.1) before the meeting where we were told that the shed was compliant. The drawings which were available since September both show that the planned width to be 12.2m. I also introduced the fact that the only authorised drawing from 1996 showed that the shed was 2.7m taller than planned. I also make the point that the TGA minutes were the best guide to what went on at the time and not what the Council told the Ombudsman 18 months later.
26 October: email to the Council Solicitor, GH, telling her that we went to the meeting at the Town hall on 25-Nov-13 expecting to come away with, either, plans to show we were wrong in our assessment that the shed was both too high and too wide or a concession that we were correct. We came away with neither and that is my main complaint against Councillor Anglin. I advised her that I went and measured the width of the shed and advised all at the meeting that we had been misinformed by the Case Officer. I then made it very clear to her how the Council mislead the Ombudsman to hide the fact that the shed was too high.
14 November: comments to the Chair of the TGA 30-Oct circulated (I had given him two weeks to respond – he used to be very prompt). I had introduced a drawing to illustrate quite clearly why he and others are wrong about shed. I also laid blame on the shed still being there down to him, his employer, the Case Officer and Councillor Anglin. 20 November: an explanation of why a complaint about the conduct of the Case Officer had not been made to the new Ward Councillor, AH. I was more concerned about about UK Docks being allowed to continue working on the shed when they had no planning permission for it. I included a detailed summary of what that went on at that time so that AH and the MP would know how and why the Ombudsman had been misinformed by the Council. I though it might be a good idea to fill in the gaps before the Council completely clouded the issue.
22 November: an explanation of blind copy to circulate information to a resident. I also took the opportunity to remind everyone about the basic fact the shed had not been given planning permission.
12 December: it being nearly three months since I first wrote to the Monitoring Officer about the Conduct of Councillor Anglin I thought I might prompt her into a response by reminding her that one ought to give priority to approved plans over non approved plans especially if they contain errors or have vital details missing. I also took the opportunity to remind her of why I had complained in the first place: after I had explained to everyone at the meeting that we had been misinformed about the width Cllr Anglin wrote back.
Please see below the reply from Peter (Cunningham):
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.
The correction to the date is mine and while Mr Cunningham doesn’t give the drawing number it was probably a copy of the same one that I was sent a day later and that very clearly gives the planned width as 12.2m (12,200mm).
It was measured by the Case Officer as 13.1m and by me as 13.2m. When I have said in the past that Cllr Anglin did not acknowledge the notice, I should have been more precise and said he ignored what the notice was telling him. Also hidden in the Case Officer’s reply is the error in the elevation (3 is a quarter of 12 not 15) described in more detail in a similar figure in the email dated, 14 November.
Email received from a Council Solicitor 3 days later, restating the complaint then answering the revised complaint by repeating the responses or deliberate misrepresentations given to the Ombudsman by the Council.