My email of the 4th April said, in no uncertain terms that the shed was taller than planned and as you can see, he then repeated the lie made in his response to our Petition, that the shed had been approved with added detail in the response of the 2nd June:-
The approved dimensions that I state are those which are annotated on drawing number 8296/1A which was submitted to the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation on 11 April 1996. That must be the plan which the Development Corporation was referring to when it granted planning permission in 1996. The height of the steelwork at River Drive is clearly marked as 12.5m+3m (total 15.5m). The difference in height of the slipway over the length of the shelter is marked as 96.1-93.444 (2.656m). 15.5m plus 2.656m gives the height at the riverside of 18.156m. I attach a A1 size copy of this plan.
I still have have that copy and the first thing to note is that it was never approved because it showed both ends to have the same height and there is a gradient of nearly 3m between each end. One can only conclude that Mr Mansbridge was repeating the lie about its approved height so that he did not have to respond to the reasonable request made on May 9th 2014:-
In the light of this please consider a correction to the letters sent to the households 32 to 99 Greens Place and all the households in Harbour View.
In the lead to the false claim that the shed had been built to the approved height one can see that he had also dismissed drawing 8296/14:-
“The drawing you have referred to [8296/14] was submitted in discharge of condition 4 relating to the fixing details of the end panels. The engineer also chose to include a gable elevation of the structure on the same drawing but that was not drawn to scale. If it would help I would be more than happy to meet with you to show you the relevant plans and elevation as this may clear up this specific point.
We did arrange a meeting and I made arrangements to travelled to South Shields to view drawing 8296/14 was not discussed because it was not brought to the meeting, and like the previous meeting held in November 2013 it was deliberately not minuted.
The Planning Manager said, following the meeting, 8-Jul-14:- “The height is said to be ‘approximately 15.5 m high’- I accept that there is no reference to whether this is the inland end, or the riverside end, but when read in conjunction with the drawing (8296/1A) it must refer to the inland end.
The Head of Development Services said of the same meeting:- “I fully understand that there are issues associated with the UK Docks development that you remain unhappy with however I did appreciate the manner by which to conducted yourself when we met; so thank you for that.
The lie that 8296/14 was not drawn to scale had been was added to the lie that it referred inland end of the shed and by the time by the first got to the Ombudsman the first was repeated but she treated the second with more scepticism:-
The drafter has not specified which end this is and the drawings are not to scale.
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A just criticism of that note in paragraph 37 and the rest was published some time ago and the because South Tyneside cannot counter it they devised a methods of avoiding it the criticism altogether by first saying that our observation that the shed was taller than planned was an allegation and later that the complaint had been exhausted internally and externally.
The main ploy to avoid the truth about the shed during Mr M Swales time as Chief Executive was to avoid answering any questions was misapply Section F of a Staff Code to get me sectioned and he asked his Corporate Lead to do this in 2016.
It was considered so successful, not only in hiding the truth about the height of the shed but also the misconduct of some of their planning officers and managers that it was adopted by the next Council Leader and her Legal Officer, Mr J Rumney, because they too were trapped in the cycle of deceit started by the Principal Planning Manager in 2013.
Meanwhile Section F had been replaced by a Section 7. Managing unacceptable and/or unreasonable behaviour in the Complaint Policy of 2019. Paula Abbott was asked misapply the new version, now labelled Section F of to do this:-
Any emails you make to officers of the Council regarding this subject, will not be acknowledged or responded to.
A year later Cllr T Dixon’s new partner in hiding these truths was the new Chief Executive, Mr J Tew whose appointment was confirmed in September 2021. It appears that Ms Abbott had taken notice of what I was saying about the shed, and made herself unavailable for the job of enforcing the misuse of Complaints Policy 2019 v1.5 and it appears that no one was found to fill her place and it was left to Ms Hoy in to continue the misuse of the Complaints Policy in 2022 and 2023.
The receipt of Ms Abbott’ email of the 29th April 2021 prompted me to redirect Part 3 of Shed and Corruption to Ms Abbot and the Interim Head of Legal Services and it, like the truth about the height of the shed, has never been acknowledged.
It appears that when Ms Abbott took care, to take notice of what I was saying about the shed and the job of enforcing the misuse of Complaints Policy 2019 v1.5 was passed back Ms Hoy in 2022.
Messrs Palmer, Buck and Harlow