Shed and Corruption – Part 1

The Complaint Goes Astray

It occurred to me before I even saw the final draft, 15-Apr-15 that the Ombudsman was repeating the lies about the shed rather than the truth and I wrote to our MP about it, 31-Mar-15 but some bright spark had noticed that I was lodging in Amble so my email was diverted to Alan Beith the MP for Berwick but he was standing down but said he would pass my email/letter to his successor.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan reviewed the situation and wrote to the Chief Executive, Mr Swales. Her assessment was concise, and would have been superb apart from the fact that she was not specific about which end of the shed should have a height of 15.5m. All it needed was an explanation to both to clear this up and I popped the letters to her and Mr Swales into the post on the 9th June 2015, wondering how he would react to my proposition: “You have not specified that the stated height (15.5m) is of the river end of the shelter and it is likely that, Mr Swales, if he follows the arguments of the Planning Manager and the Head of Development Services before him, will say it refers to the road end.”

I was curious to know how he had reacted and enquired of her office and Anne-Marie herself a few times over the next six months but received no reply and it was not until January 2016 that I discovered why I had received no answer. It was because he had resolved the problem I had set him by instructing one to his staff one to his staff to accuse us of making allegations, attachment 6, 25-Jun-15:

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The matters and allegations raised by your constituent are well documented and have been subject to a number of enquiries from Mr Dawson and other local residents over a lengthy period of time.

His solution, to falsely accuse us of making allegations, was made to cover over the fact that his staff had been lying about the shed for nearly two years. There were no plans to show we were wrong in our view about the shed taller than planned. Mrs Johnson went on to say, 1-Jun-15: Please do not hesitate to share this letter with your constituent.

Needless to say the letter was not shared with her constituent and I would not have discovered Mr Swales instruction to his Corporate Lead to malign the good people of South Shields rather than admit to the truth about of the shed, because the actions of the Planning Officer charge of the Second Phase of the River Drive development which included adding 5.5m to the shed.
The officer, Mr Simmonette, was put in a similar position to that of the Chief Executive on June the 9th when I copied him into my letter to the MP for Berwick. I had written to Mr Simmonette in September but he did not even have the courtesy to respond so I wrote again, 04-Dec-15, and asked: 1) Do you agree that 8296/1A shows, in truth, that the planned height of the road end is about 12.5m? and 2) Do you agree that 8296/14 shows the planned height of the road end is about 12.5m and that it has been built 3m higher than authorised in 1996?
I had grown very wary of people saying that 8296/1A shows the road end of 15.5 and repeating that it had been approved. I also think that Mr Simmonette had been made aware that to repeat it was probably criminal fraud so referred the email to Alison Hoy and the real reason for the Council giving misinformation to the Local Government Ombudsman was revealed, 9-Dec-15.

Once the Council has hold of the Ombudsman’s Decision they tell anyone who enquires with concerns about the shed being taller and/or longer than planned that the matter has been dealt by the Ombudsman. No-one thinks that a Council could possibly lie to the Local Government Ombudsman, 26-Jan-16, so any enquiry gets flicked into the waste bin, for example:

1. MP for Berwick, 25-Jun-15, – The matters and allegations raised by your constituent are well documented and have been subject to a number of enquiries from Mr Dawson and other local residents over a lengthy period of time. The matter was ultimately referred by way of complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman, the outcome of which was delivered on 14 April 2015.
2. CA to Me, 9-Dec-15, – The complaint was not upheld and was also considered and decided by the Local Government Ombudsman who found no fault with the Council’s decision.

Before I move on I wish it to be known that it was not a further complaint made on the 13th July 2015 but a request for the screen prints for 248789 and 253539 over which I was having trouble. Alison solved the problem by simply sending me screen prints – the latter referenced twice.
With the response from the solicitors Peter Dunn, and Co and Alison’s email of the 9th December 2015, I had proof that the Council were feeding misinformation to the LGO to enable them to hide malpractice and my first task was then to get them to admit they were doing it.

Corporate Lead: 5-Oct-16, – I can again advise that there is no evidence to suggest that there has been deliberate misinformation provided by Council officers to the Local Government Ombudsman.

Giving misinformation to the Ombudsman is deliberate by its very nature and in that statement she denying that the shed was taller than planned. More seriously was saying that the Council were not giving misinformation to the LGO. She then goes onto misuse ‘Section F’ of some staff code normally applied to silence unreasonable and persistent complainants.
One complaint that the Council were giving misinformation to the LGO was hardly persistent and if she had bothered to check the fact that, when I said the shed was 3m taller than that approved she would have have discovered that I was being entirely reasonable. The solicitor who reviewed the correspondence 2013 to 2015, thought so as well – see above.

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3. Corporate Lead: STC, 17-Jan-17, – This matter was considered and responded to by the Local Government Ombudsman in response to the earlier complaint they investigated on your behalf. The matter was also considered in the committee report for the latest planning application for the site – please see the critical appraisal of her work.
4. Customer Advocacy for CEO, 19-Jun-17, – Dear Mr Dawson, Thank you for your letter to the Chief Executive, Martin Swales, dated 26 May 2017 which was received 13 June 2017. Your letter has been forwarded to our team in line with your current contact restrictions regarding issues raised regarding the UK Docks boat shed. I must advise you that this letter is raising your historic complaint again which has been thoroughly investigated by the Council and the Local Government Ombudsman, therefore will be placed on file.
5. MP for South Shields, 6-Sep-17, – The previous issues relating to the boat yard have in fact now been looked at by the Local Government Ombudsman and they found no issue with the yard or anything relating to its development. Unfortunately, the Ombudsman’s decision cannot be re-visited.
6. STC Solicitor, Gill Hayton, 14-Dec-18:-
#4. The Council investigated the matter and found that the planning permission had been lawfully implemented.
– #6. The Local Government Ombudsman issued her decision in 2015, finding that there was no fault in the way in which the Council had determined that enforcement action (with regards to the width of the development) should not be commenced.

It looks like everyone was staying tight lipped about the height for her to say what she said. To say that planning permission had been lawfully implemented to mean approved is dishonest to say the least and note that she has omitted the height when referring to the lack of enforcement.

When Mr Haig brought the meeting in November 2013 to an end by declaring that the shed was ‘legal’, he implied that we were examining approved documents and that was why the Council removed the threat of taking enforcement action implied by the Gentleman’s Agreement and why UK Docks busied themselves without having to apply for retrospective planning permission in late 2013. Note also that the height has been excluded from talk of taking enforcement action.

Gill Hayton’s response at the close of 2018, to my complaint about Cllr Anglin’s part in this, included some of the misrepresentations given to the Ombudsman by a Senior Planning Officer. The repetition of the three lies made no sense unless they were included for presentation to someone appointed to look carefully into the conduct of Councillor Anglin:

Gill Hayton’s response at the close of 2018, to my complaint about Cllr Anglin,s part in this, included some of the misrepresentations given to the Ombudsman by a Senior Planning Officer. The repetition of the three lies made no sense unless they were included for presentation by someone appointed to hide the misconduct of Councillor Anglin.

No. LGO Gill Hayton
1 23. the Council accepts these measurements were wrong. 5. the Council later accepted that the measurements as taken in 2013 were incorrect.
2 31. The applicant stated the height at this end as 12.5 metres plus 3 metres making 15.5 metres. 6. the Ombudsman found no fault in how the Council determined the permitted height of the landward end of the development was 12.5 metres plus 3 metres.
3 23. It decided the degree of departure from the plans – less than one metre – was “non-material.” 5. The Council decided not to take enforcement action against the developer and considered the degree of departure from the grant of planning permission was “non-material” given the overall scale of the building.
  1. Not true. The measurement were were taken on 17 September 2013 and had not changed by the time UK Docks restarted working on their shed in December 2013 – see pages 1 & 2;
  2. Not true. The only one of the two authorised drawing from 1996 states the approved height to be 12.7m, the other is dimensionless – see page 1;
  3. Even the Council admit that the extra width was in breach of
    planning permission – see response to petition, 2-May-14.

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Following visits to UK Docks in the spring of 2019, by the MP and a Councillor, we were told that they had been given permission retrospectively their shed which was so obviously a lie but I could foresee the Council would use it to replace the lie that the shed was the approved height, which the with the aid of the Ombudsman, they had maintained for over five years.

It took me till the end of 2019 to get confirmation from the Council that UK Docks they had not been given permission retrospectively and this goes right back to the question first asked by you in September 2013 and answered by me in January 2014 and that poses the question, why when the Council found out that the shed was taller and wider than planned did they do nothing about it and secondly, why was it allowed to be extended.

UK Docks were allowed to extend their taller than planned shed because the Council had hidden the fact that it was taller than planned when they gave misinformation/misrepresentation to the Local Government Ombudsman.

As far as I can see the main complaint, that the shed is bigger than planned and the Council have done nothing about it still stands. The escalation of your complaint made by me on January 10th 2014 was just to tidy up a loose end.

Some time ago it became clear that the misuse of both the Complaints Procedure and the Office of the Ombudsman was not exclusive to South Tyneside Council and I even suggested that the latter should be made a criminal offence. I have come round to thinking that the issue should be raised in Parliament, by the MP for South Shields (Emma) rather than the MP for Berwick upon Tweed (Anne-Marie), and they can decide what to do with errant Councils and an easily swayed Ombudsman.

Emma, because she should now be aware of what went on and we do not know what the Chief Executive told Anne-Marie on the 25th June 2015. The Corporate Lead’s letter was attachment 6 and though I have asked, they will not tell me what is in the main letter or any of the other attachments.

There are nearly 50 references (URLs) and I make no apologies because we would not have had to complain about the shed if Mr Cunningham had admitted that it was taller than planned in the first week or so of September 2013. They would have had to have built it elsewhere as the one for which they had permission was not economically viable. When they first recovered the drawings from archive they appear to have issued what I think is called a Stop Notice to bring UK Docks to the table to discuss what they were going to do with the taller structure.

When they heard we were trying to resurrect the dormant TGA they spotted a weak spot and Cllrs Anglin and McMillan went into action but what they and Messrs Watson and Haig did not realise was that there was a fatal flaw in their scheme. Mr Cunningham had to either to admit we were right about the shed or commit fraud. He chose the latter and that is why South Tyneside Council have gone dreadfully quiet about UK Docks.

Yours sincerely
Mick

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