When Mr Mansbridge passed my letter of the 4-Apr-14 back to planning he had taken a leaf out of his Principal Planning Officer’s book, Mr Cunningham’s, in passing the original complaint back to Chair of the Tyne Gateway Assn. To avoid the question of the height, of the shed he introduces his letter with:
The queries that you raise are not new, indeed I have been repeating my response to them for some time now, and you will recall that I explained the planning aspect of the Council’s position to you regarding this development during our meeting.
They are not new and the one specifically about the height was first asked by Melanie in September 2013 and has never been properly answered, page 1: Has the revised height of 15.5metres been approved or is it in breach of the 1996 Planning approval?
In the latest attempt to avoid the question of height the Council unjustly accuse me of unacceptable and/or unreasonable behaviour, hinting that I have been abusive in some way – see Section 7 of Complaints Policy 2019v1.5.
Much in the same way that I have told the Council for the last 7 and half years, that the shed is 3m taller than planned, I explained to Paula her misuse of the policy was ill advised in Shed and Corruption – Part 4 and I realise that considerable pressure must have been put on her and I sincerely hope that you were not one of those advisers, when she said, re that Policy:
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.
It was obvious that when the Principal Planning Officer failed to pass across the only approved drawing from 1996 with dimensions at the meeting in November 2013, that he was lying when he said that the shed was compliant to mean, it had been approved.
It was equally obvious that the drawing made by UK Docks’ Agent in August 2013, 8296/14, and approved by the Planning Manager in October 2013 was equally valid in proving that the protesters, of which I was one of many, were correct when we complained about the height. When he failed to bring it to the meeting specifically arranged to view it in July 2014 – please see ‘The Trap’ on Page 7, all he did was to confirm its value to the protesters as I explained in some detail on Pages 5 and 6.
My letter to Melanie had grown to 12 pages of closely reasoned text. and was drafted to show that when we had arrived in Stage 2 of the Council’s Complaints Procedure and it was admitted we were correct about the shed being too tall by some 3m.
That should have been the end of the shed but the Head of Development Services was working from a different script, one which was to strip our complaint of all sense and that was why he completed its deletion by introducing 253539. He did this by overwriting the actual Stage 2 with one that repeated the earlier fraudulent misrepresentation that the shed had been approved made by the Principal Planning Officer and a month later by his Planning Manager.
Councillor Anglin was not representing the interests of the residents of his ward when he asked the Executive of South Tyneside Council (Customer Advocacy) get him off the hook. He had been told, by reference to the authorised drawings from 1996 that the shed was nearly 3m taller than permitted.
It was a simple act of denial when Customer Advocacy said, on his behalf, “Regarding your comments regarding the additional boat shed, this was subject to a separate planning application and the Council’s planning department advise that past issues do not affect the validity of any new planning applications.”
My Email to Cllr Anglin was about existing shed, 8-Aug-17, “I think it probably best to properly involve our MP but please let me know quickly which side you and your fellow Councillors are on as UK Docksare currently preparing to extend the shed and the permission for that was gained by deceit.”