Legal is in quotes because it was the term used by first by UK Docks, September 2013, then Councillor Anglin to mean that the shed had approval, December 1, 2013, and it would appear that that my response did not please the Chief Executive, Mr Swales nor his Head of Development Services, Mr Mansbridge, because by 2016, both were implicated in the fraudulent misrepresentation that UK Docks shed had been built to the approved height. I did not get a response from Mrs Johnson but from Ms Hoy:-
From: Customer Advocates
Date: Fri, September 16, 2016 11:42 am
To: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
This email has been classified as: NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED
Dear Mr Dawson
Thank you for your email and the copy of the letter sent to Mrs Johnson.
Mrs Johnson received your letter on her return to work 12 September and acknowledges its receipt.
For your information Michaela Green (nee Hamilton) is currently on secondment and therefore your email will be considered along with the letter to Mrs Johnson.
You will be contacted in due course following further checks into this matter.
Yours sincerely
Alison Hoy
Performance and Information Support Officer
Customer Advocacy
South Tyneside Council
It appears that Mrs Hayley Johnson had already been instructed to carry out her threat to section me because my email to her of the 2nd September and the copy to Customer Advocacy on the 3rd, were never answered. Very obviously the further checks showed would have shown that the shed was 3m taller than planned and that someone had lied to the Ombudsman from the start. I had written to Mr Swales, July 8, 2016:-
I ask you to look again at this because there is a clear contradiction between what the Council were telling the LGO and what is known. Why your staff should misrepresent the facts to the LGO is for you to determine. That they have misinformed the LGO should be admitted and corrected and that is what this letter is about.
He clearly did not want to admit that his staff had misinformed the LGO nor why they chose to misrepresent the facts to them and to get his Corporate Lead off the hook, for lying to both you and I, in 2015 he allowed the misuse Section F to silence me in October 2016:-
“We will not acknowledge or respond to any issues that have already been the subject of investigation by the Council, or by the Local Government Ombudsman. Any such correspondence from you will be read and placed on file, but we will not acknowledge or respond to it.
Contrary to what Ms Hoy had written on Friday, September the 16th, my letter to Mrs Johnson was never considered and now one can add Mr Harding, the Head of Legal Services, to the Executive (Mr Swales and Mr Mansbridge) for Mrs Johnson had added:-
“If you have concerns that I have provided incorrect information in this letter and you wish to request a review of my decision, you should contact Mike Harding, Head of Legal Services, by writing to him at the address below: Town Hall and Civic Offices Westoe Road South Shields Tyne and Wear NE33 2RL.
Logic, if nothing else, had dictated that I would have been wasting my time as well as Ms Hoy’s if I had bothered to respond, following Mrs Johnson’s letter of the 5th October by writing to Mr Harding. There is still a letter to him complaining about the conduct the Council Solicitor, Ms Hayton on the 19th April 2019 that remains unanswered.
When I started my Shed and Corruption Series last year someone at the Town Hall realised very quickly after Part 2, where it was heading and while I was compiling the third part, I received a letter from a Ms Abbott who had been directed by Ms Hoy into applying the rewrite of Section F (Complaints Policy 2019v1.5 Reviewers: Hayley Johnson, Ros Watters and Alison Hoy).
Ms Abbott quotes from a ‘supposed’ letter from Ms Hoy of the 28-Aug-18:- I am writing to you following Ms Hoy’s letter to you of 28 August 2018, advising that the contact restrictions which had been imposed on your contact with the Council had been lifted. The letter advised you that we would continue to monitor your contacts with the Council, and should you attempt to resume your historic complaint, that we would take similar action in the future, should the need arise.
I say supposed letter because I have no record of it and it would have been a waste of time asking either of them for a copy it because they have between them they had updated the Corporate Lead’s device for corrupting the Council’s Complaints Procedure with the misapplication of Section 7 of it which had replaced Section F.
Ms Hoy had not told Ms Abbott was that there had only ever been one complaint to the Ombudsman that the Council had been giving misinformation to them and that it had been dismissed because the second Inspector for the Ombudsman had said that the complaint remained that of the complaint to the first Ombudsman which was, that UK Docks’ shed off River Drive, South Shields, was nearly three meters taller than planned.
When the authorised plans say what the river end of the shed should have a height of 15.5m and it is built to a height of 18.2m, it is not built to the approved height, it is 2.7m taller than planned.
I had explained in great detail to the first Ombudsman how the shed was taller than planned but she was persuaded otherwise by a Senior Planning Officer of South Tyneside Council as one can tell by her Summary which I have added as a footnote.