Dear Paula Abbott,
Please see my views on our recent correspondence about the shed on River Drive. I hope I have made it very clear that I am not pleased with your view that I have been abusive. Please see the letter attached.
It centres on the question asked of the Chief Executive on the 8th July and the response from Mrs Johnson, 1st August 2016:
Q: 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.
R: There is no evidence to suggest that there has been deliberate misinformation provided by Council officers to the Local Government Ombudsman.
Her response was basically a lie and you only have to look at the approved drawing from 1996 to see that the LGO have been misinformed but she makes sure that I am not able to respond by threatening to section me using the guidelines given in ‘Section F’ – she carried out the threat on October the 5th.
You will understand why I was not pleased find you doing the same thing nearly 5 years later but what disturbs me most is your remark that: You were also advised that you are free to contact the Ombudsman and make further enquiries of their office, but unless the Council receives formal enquiries from the Ombudsman, we would not look at this further.
It was not Mrs Johnson who said advised me over a year ago that I might approach the Ombudsman but Simon Buck on behalf of Mr Palmer, 14-Jan-20:
Mr Palmer correctly informed you that MPs have no influence over the Local Government Ombudsman, and he suggested that a possible course of action may be to complain further to the Local Government Ombudsman and suggested you take legal advice.
The subtext is of course, that I had been trying to influence the Ombudsman with the MP’s help. Mr Buck was the office manager to the MP and her husband though I believe they have parted company and when you understand that I have been trying to persuade Emma to raise the issue of Councils giving misinformation to the Ombudsman for some time, you will see where Mr Palmer was coming from.
When I pointed out the very obvious flaw in the Buck/Palmer proposition that Emma/myself were trying to influence the Ombudsman decision making (we did not meet or correspond until two years after the Ombudsman completed the final draft of her findings, 15-Apr-15) the Buck/Palmer duo changed tack, with reference to the Parliamentary Behaviour Code: Dear Mr Dawson,:Thank you for your recent emails. However, I must draw your attention to your continued vexatious, slanderous and personal attacks on a valued member of staff working from the Office of Emma Lewell-Buck MP.
I guess what must of rubbed Mr Palmer up the wrong way was my email to him on the 20th February or perhaps calling him Mr Parker in the one to Simon Buck on the 24th February, some people can be very touchy about getting their name wrong but It can hardly be a continued vexatious, slanderous and personal attack on him. The two attachments: DishonestyatTH-Emma30Oct19.pdf and Destroying Evidence.pdf do not refer to him either.
What was significant was their misuse of the Parliamentary Behaviour Code and Mrs Johnson misuse of Section F which only show that they had both lost reason and resorted to character assassination. That reflects badly on them the pair of them and my question to you is what links your attempt to avoid procedural issues by suggesting that I make enquiries to the Ombudsman and Mr Palmer’s suggestion that I complain further to them and the misuse of both him and Mrs Johnson of staff codes.
If you were to bounce the question straight back to me I; yesterday it would have been Mr Palmer but today I’m not so sure. I will ponder on that while I write ‘Shed and Corruption – Part 4’. in the meantime there is still a lot of work to do in tidying up the time-line.
Thank you for helping organise my thoughts, S and C: Part 4 will remain the same as I had planned when I first wrote to Melanie about Part 1 but I’m glad to say Part 5 now has theme with which to work on.
Kind regards
Michael