The first of these officers was Mr P Cunningham, who had written in response to the complaint raised on the 10th January:-
“My understanding is that the responses that I had provided to you at this meeting enabled the matter to be closed.
May I therefore suggest that you speak with the Chair of the residents group in respect of the points that you have raised below – etc.
I had presented whoever picked up the complaint a simple choice: to admit the truth about the shed’s height or hide the fact that it was taller than the approved plans allowed and he chose the latter because it allowed him to rescind the decision made mid September and allow UK Docks to resume work soon after the meeting, 25th November 2013.
The dispute between the Chair of the residents group (TGA) and I over whether the slipway shed was taller than planned was not resolved when we met with Mr Cunningham at the Town Hall at a meeting organised by a Ward Councillor, in November 2013:-
Subject: RE: TGA - Town Hall Meeting 25 Nov Michael I took no minutes as is customary at these informal meetings. For your record I am sure all would agree:
1. The Exec representatives of the Group accepted that the
construction had been made legally as per drawings seen.
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A meaningless statement when one has to consider whether a structure has been built to approved plans. Mr Cunningham had brought drawings to the meeting but they had not been approved by the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation. Points 2,3, and 4 were irrelevant to whether UK Docks had approval for their shed and examination of drawing 8296/14 which had been been sent to the Council at least a month and a half before the meeting would have shown that they had no approval for a shed of 18m at its river end.
While I was waiting for that drawing I noticed that 8296/1B gave the width of the shed as 12.2m and mindful that one of the other protestors knew it was wider as well as being taller, I went along and measured it. UK Docks had made it easy to do by making the sides of the vertical and I found it to be 13.2m. It was actually 13.1m but it pointed to the fact that those at the meeting, apart from myself, were happy to go along, not only with the lie about its height but the fact it was wider than permitted as well.
I had asked for a copy of 8296/14 but I received a copy of 8296/1A which contained the same error as 1B and recalculation showed again the landward end as 12.8m. It also gave the river end of the shed as 15.5m and only went to confirm that our assessment of the shed’s height was correct as the gradient between the ends is 2.7m and that Mr Cunningham had chosen to hide the truth about it at the Town Hall meeting in November 2013.
It should be a given that only approved drawing should be used to determine whether a structure has planning permission but it was not until we saw the approved drawing 8296/2 at the back end of January 2014, did we have proof that the permitted height of the landward end should be 12.7m.
Mr Cunningham must have known of the existence of the approved drawing and his method of avoiding telling a direct lie about the shed’s height was to refer back to the November meeting. Unfortunately for him, there was a record in the minutes of Tyne Gateway Assn of the first time 15.5m was associated with the fraud that the shed was not taller than planned:-
KH advised that they had seen the plans which were date stamped 1996, the structure is 15.5m. Proper drawings were on file and there is nothing illegal about the structure.
KH was Mr Ken Haig, who with Mr G Watson were the Exec representatives who attended the meeting of 25th November 2013 and notice he does not specify which end of the shed has a height of 15.5m but more importantly he did not declare his interest in UK Docks. He was at that time, the sole director of the firm HB Hydraulics, who were based in Portsmouth.
It turned out it was the rebuild of the property, formally owned by his wife, in Greens Place that was to provide him with an immediate gain following the Town Hall meeting in November 2013 because the need for a retrospective look at the rebuild of 71 Greens Place was done away with when an architect redrew a party wall to match what had been built rather than what had been approved and the new plan was accepted by the Planning Manager.
I digress, Mr Cunningham had picked up a complaint that a structure was in breach of an approved plan and referred it back to a meeting where we had been told that there was no breach. He then suggested I make a complaint about his response to the complaint about the breach:- “If you are still not satisfied with the Council’s response then you should use the Council’s complaints procedure which has 3 stages. Not only did he withhold the approved drawings from 1996 he suggested I raise a complaint about his misconduct and both were referred on his manager on January 14th 2014:-
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Therefore until I have some satisfactory answers to my very reasonable questions I do not consider this matter closed. If you are unable to supply me with answers to my questions could you please pass the issue to someone who can.