The other is the misrepresentation that UK Docks had complied with the second condition of the grant made by the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation, ST/0242/96UD. Anyone can see that they had not by looking at the approved plans, either from 1996 or 2013, but to return to 2023 and the comment posted just over two weeks ago:- “Will you just give it a rest mate!
I appreciate that anyone could have generated simonwrs@gmail.com on server 81.134.17.247 but it does not matter if it was or was not the former partner of the MP for South Shields.
Whoever it was, he or she, has inadvertently taken us back to a point on the timeline we have shared since 2014 when you first wrote to me on the 11th July:- Your letter to the Chief Executive, Martin Swales, was forwarded to our team on 7 July 2014 in accordance with the Councils corporate complaints procedure. Following your email of 10 July to George Mansbridge, in which you confirmed that following your earlier meeting with him you still wished to proceed with your complaint, we have now escalated this to stage 3 of the procedure.
I can say this because the escalation by your office to Stage 3 is central to the corruption of the Council’s corporate complaints procedure. My letter of the 7 July 2014 states very clearly that the shed is taller and wider than the plans allow and I attached a copy of my email to the Planning Manager of 04-Mar-2014, thanking him for conceding that the shed was, as we said it was, nearly 3m taller than the approved plans of 1996, 8296/2, allowed.
My email to Mr Mansbridge of 10 July says nothing about Stage 3, I said:- There did not appear to be anything new on the table regarding my complaint and I cannot change my view that UK Docs built the Slipway Shed on River Drive to one set of plans while asking their agents to submit different ones to suggest that they were complying with the conditions laid out in an earlier application. I would still like the office of the Chief Executive to review my complaint.
In April/May 2019, UK Docks told either the MP for South Shields or Cllr Hamilton or both that they had been given retrospective permission for their shed, because they could not provide any drawings to show otherwise, and it took me until December or get confirmation that it was a lie but the Monitoring Officer added a catch all to hide the fact that Mr G Mansbridge version of my complaint was presented to the Ombudsman rather than the original complaint raised on the 10th January 2014.
The catch all, by the way, states:- I understand that all complaints procedures regarding this matter have been exhausted both internally within the Council and externally.
3
The first stage was where the complaint raised in January 2014, with evidence that the shed was both taller and wider than permitted, was referred back to the Tyne Gateway Assn instead of being addressed by the Principal Principal Planning Officer Mr P Cunningham.
The second stage was where the Planning Manager, Mr G Atkinson admitted that the objectors were correct about the shed but had seeded his response with a major piece of misinformation which was later to reappear in the Ombudsman’s findings.
The admission that the residents were right about the shed’s height was overwritten by the then Head of Development Services, Mr G Mansbridge by repeating the lie about its height, firstly in his response to the Petition and then in what was actually a third stage but presented to me, the other protestors and most importantly to the staff responsible for the Chief Executive’s response as a second response.
What was in fact a fourth stage was then submitted to the Ombudsman as a third stage and she chose to believe a Senior Planning Officer who had provided her with a faux Stage 3 response rather than a resident who had given her proof that the shed was taller than planned, cf paragraph 36.
I had been forced to refer the complaint about UK Docks’ shed being both wider and taller than permitted to the Ombudsman because South Tyneside Council was using a corrupted version of their complaints procedure to drive it forward and exhaust the complaints procedure internally through the various stages as outlined in the guide.
The practice is somewhat different and in the case of the shed there were four stages, not three, per the guide and that was why I called the review of the timeline I shared with the residents and the Council in 2021, Shed and Corruption.
The complaint flew through its fourth stage because the author failed to mention the height of the shed at all and the lie that it had been built to the approved height, reappeared in paragraph 33 of the Ombudsman’s Findings.