As you can see response made by Mr Buck on the 14th January 2020 was in complete contrast to my exchange with Emma some weeks before, especially with the added implication that I was impolite and lying:- “I wish to address two points you raised. I was present during the conversation between Mr Palmer and yourself. I am afraid your recollection of the conversation was not a true account. Mr Palmer was polite, informative and accurate.
Besides implying that I was telling tales Mr Buck confirmed for me that Mr Palmer had been appointed by someone from the Town Hall with an interest in concealing the fact that the Local Labour Party had been bullying Emma since she was first elected in 2013:- “Lawyers acting for Emma Lewell-Buck say the South Shields MP, who could soon be ousted by the so-called trigger ballot process, has been subject to six years of abuse from local party officials.
It does not look very good does it, Mr Palmer not only hides the fact that he would have been aware that I had already taken advice from a solicitor and Mr Buck attempts to hide the fact that his former partner had been ‘bullied’ by those of a misogynist persuasion at the Town Hall for the best part of seven years and it looks from here like they transferred all their loathing towards Cllr Hamilton once Emma had been safely re-elected as the MP.
I thought I had resolved the issue after addressing the pair of them, 16-Jan-20:-
Dear Sirs,
I can confirm that UK Docks did not submit an application for the Council for retrospective planning and the email I sent to Councillor Hamilton I have copied to a PDF file and attached it. She may be able to help you with the legal points you wish to raise. I have a dispute with Mrs Johnson about the misinformation/misrepresentation given to the Local Government Ombudsman. I agree with Mr Tilbury of Peter Dunn & co but she maintains that there is no evidence of any.
Apparently not, Mr Buck was persuaded by those in charge at the Town Hall, remember Council leader Iain Malcolm did not go till he was ousted in November 2020, to accuse me outrageous behaviour, 26-Feb-20:- “Dear Mr Dawson, Thank you for your recent emails. However, I must draw your attention to your continued vexatious, slanderous and personal attacks on a valued member of staff working from the Office of Emma Lewell-Buck MP.”
Excuse me Alison, but talking on the phone once, to someone pretending to be an MP’s member of staff can hardly be a, “continued vexatious, slanderous and personal attack” on anyone and Mr Buck’s recording of it would have to have been heavily edited to disguise the fact that Mr Palmer was being mocked and he says, 3 years later:- “Will you just give it a rest mate!
Sorry no, not until I get an extremely humble apology from Mr Palmer’s masters at the Town Hall or those that followed them, late in 2020, I will not give it a rest.
Towards the end of Cllr I Malcolm’s reign at the Town Hall the Chief Executive saw which way the wind was blowing and fled a month or so earlier than his Council Leader on September 30th 2020 and that left Cllr T Dixon in charge of the Council from November 2020.
Mr Swales may not have devised the scheme to obstruct the truth behind the shed’s survival but it originated on his on his watch and should have died a death on his and Cllr Malcolm’s departure but it did not because it was so useful to his successor Cllr Dixon who was in control in 2021 when it was reissued on the 29th April 2021 by Paula Abbott at your guidance after Section F had been replaced by Section 7 Complaints Policy 2019v1.5 when she wrote:-
I enclose a copy of our Complaints Policy and would refer you to Section 7 on Dealing with Unreasonable Behaviour. In my view, your behaviour is unreasonable because:
• persistent refusal to accept a decision; persistent refusal to accept explanations;
• continuing to contact us without presenting new and relevant information
• Adopting a ‘scattergun’ approach: pursuing a complaint or complaints with the authority and, at the same time, with a Member of Parliament/a councillor/ independent auditor/the Standards Board/local police/solicitors/the Local Government Ombudsman/the press.
5
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.