In the same article, 28-Feb-19, author: C Binding; reported that the Interim Head of Legal Services went on to say:- “Whether it’s possible to go back beyond the beginning of this year or late 2019 I’m not sure that the records will be there I’m afraid.”
It looks like Mr Rumney was giving his blessing for the removal of evidence of any correspondence that could incriminate building inspectors, planning officers and their managers etc. from 2013 up to late 2019 and that includes giving misinformation/misrepresentation to Local Government Ombudsman to hide the fact that a senior planning officer lied when he claimed that UK Docks had approval for the shed we see today.
The truly disturbing thing about this episode is that if one tries to reference the Gazette article of 28th February 2019 one will fail because the publication date has been moved from its original date from nearly a year before my altercation with Messrs Buck and Palmer to the 7th July 2020, some six months after it.
When I picked up the reference to the meeting from the article in the Gazette: Published 28th Feb 2019, 14:03 GMT- 4 min read, one would conclude that it referred to the meeting had been held in July 2018 rather than July 2019. The situation has been confused by someone requesting a change to the publication date from February 2019 to July 2020.
It now appears that Mr Buck had been prompted to accuse me of vexatious behaviour by Mr K Palmer as a result of the meeting in February 2019 which included Cllr D Purvis who was Council Leader and Mr J Rumney, Corporate Lead, Legal & Governance at South Tyneside Council.
I started my Shed and Corruption Series in March 2021 and it was based on the timeline that I had shared with my neighbours and the Council since we first noticed that Building Control were operating to standards depending who they were dealing with rather than with what they were supposed to be dealing.
Within a month of the issue of the Second Part of the Series in April 2021 the Council reintroduced the practice first put in place in 2016, late so that they need not answer questions relating to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and more especially about the planned height of the shed.
It was based on the misuse of Section F of their Staff Code and initiated by the Council’s Corporate Lead, Hayley Johnson, on behalf of the Chief Executive because he did not did not want to admit that I was correct when I asked on behalf of the other local residents:-
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.
She had said a year earlier in an attachment to a letter to the MP for Berwick, 25th June 2015:-
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. The matter was ultimately referred by way of complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman, the outcome of which was delivered on 14 April 2015.