Shed and Corruption – Part 10: How UK Docks got their Longer Shed

Shed and Corruption - Part 10
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: 30/12/2021 (17:05:36 GMT)
To: Jonathan Tew
Cc: Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP, Emma Lewell-Buck MP, George Mansbridge,
Garry Simmonette, Alison Hoy, Nicola Robason
Attachment: SandC-Part-10.pdf

Dear Mr Tew,

I hope this email finds you well, tough I fear the contents of the attachment, How UK Docks got their Longer Shed, will not be pleasing.
When the national lockdown began to bight, earlier this year, I decided to review the timeline that was shared with the group of people who mainly lived in Greens Place and Harbour View but included some, such as Councillors Anglin and McMillan. The list grew in 2012 to include the planning and building control sections of South Tyneside Council with the development of 71 & 72 Greens Place and especially that of the building inspector, Mr M Telford.
The list grew even more when the first frames for a large shed appeared on Tyne Slipway & Engineering Co.’s premises off River Drive, which by mid September 2013 had been renamed UK Docks. It grew to include the MP Emma Lewell-Buck, the staff of the planning office, Messrs Cunningham and Atkinson and by the Spring of 2014 grew to include the Head of Development Services, Mr Mansbridge and there it should have stopped because we, the residents of Greens Place and Harbour View had established by then that the approved documents showed that the shed was actually 2.7m taller than planned.
My suspicions that the Council were misusing the Services of the Ombudsman to hide the misconduct of planning officers and the building inspector over the development 71 & 72 Greens Place were confirmed when Mr Mansbridge got to handle the complaint about UK Docks’ shed being taller than permitted and the Council had done nothing about it.
When I reviewed the timeline it became apparent that the Council had done something about it when they forced UK Docks to halt work on the shed in mid-September(2013). At the same time quite a few of us had worked out that that the plans given actually showed that the shed was in fact taller by the gradient between each end of the shed. I saw that that the plans given us had been cropped to remove the dimensions off the left had edge and the drawing identification from its foot.
Apart from the standard condition that work must start by a given date the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation said quite clearly that the shed be built to the plans approved by them and this was communicated to South Tyneside Council. We did not learn that this was the only approved print from 1996 that still existed in the Council’s archive with dimensions until a month after they had restarted work on the shed. That was a few days after the meeting in November 2013 were it was implied that UK Docks had approval.
I say implied because the owners of 71 and 72 Greens Place and Councillor Anglin were using terms like ‘lawful’ and the Principal Planning Officer and the Planning Manager were saying it was compliant or in accord with a dimensional error on unauthorised drawings.
One can only conclude from this that the two planning officers knew that they could rely on Head of Development Services would remove all record of their misconduct from the records but they had not reckoned on him blotting his own copybook, in his response to our Petition, by copying his Planning Manager’s response to our initial complaint when he said:- The approved dimensions of the steelwork are:  Proposed height 15.5m at the River Drive end.
I realised that all my correspondence through January and February 2014 not been witnessed and could be deleted so copied my letter requesting the removal of the shed to a couple of the protestors and was pleasantly surprised when the Planning Manager responded to 5 other residents besides myself:
Dear Mr Dawson,
Thank you for your email. Now I have this the Council will be able to provide a response. At this stage I am not sure who that will be from. 
Regards, Gordon Atkinson.
This pleasant surprise was short lived because the Head of Development Services reverted to the lie that the shed had been approved in his response to the Petition. I naturally asked him to correct this but he did not, he repeated another lie:- “The height of the shelter does not significantly deviate from the approved scheme as you have suggested.
Now that more and more were being copied into the discussion the Council devised another method of avoiding the truth and that was to accuse us of making allegations:- 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.
One has to look at the plans and arguments that follow, carefully, to determine which actions are reasonable and those that are not and it why I adopted the policy of an introductory email with a letter with with cross references when I started my review of out shared timeline.
UK Docks could have easily transferred half their business to River Drive, care and maintenance of the Port of Tyne’s pilot boats but not the other half, the care and maintenance of the Shields’ Ferry without making the shed tall and long enough to accommodate it.
The Ministry of Defence said that the repair of their Border Patrol Vessels needed to be done under cover hence the undue haste to get it it through planning and why the Council rigged the system so that a request for retrospective planning could be avoided:- “I can confirm that the Council as Local Planning Authority has not received a retrospective planning application from UK Docks. Monitoring Officer 19-Dec-19. 
One can glean how this done was by reading through Shed and Corruption – Parts 1 to 9 but you may miss the salient points hence the attachment with all the cross references. They are there to settle any argument about who was giving misinformation/misrepresentation and who was not and you will notice that apart from the two references to correspondence with Paula Abbott and the ones about the missing footpaths, there is nothing after December 2019 and I hope to address that in the New Year.

Kind regards
Michael Dawson.

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One Response to Shed and Corruption – Part 10: How UK Docks got their Longer Shed

  1. Mick Dawson says:

    UK Docks needed to fit an overhead crane to make the business viable but it needed 2-3 metres extra clearance and they used a mistake on drawing to gain it. They also needed to maintain the full width of the shed up to the roof and they instructed their Agent: Maughan Reynolds Partnership Ltd to draw one and they produced one to the section permitted at the main door end of the shed. As there had been no retrospective permission granted to enlarge it, 8296/14 was drawn to the overall dimensions granted in 1996 and not only is it 2.7m less tall it is nearly a metre less in width than that built. Did they rebuild it to the permitted size? No they found a building inspector and a planning officer who were quite happy to claim that they had approval it which meant they were able to extend it later to accommodate the longer ferries.
    Because of our protest, it ended up with South Tyneside Council having to mislead the Ombudsman and when this was pointed out the Chief Executive the Council then declared that we were making allegations. One only has to look at the approved drawings to see that how dishonest they have been.

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