I believed that I was going to get something comparable to the admission made by the Planning Manager in February 2014 when he agreed with me that the shed was indeed nearly 3m taller than planned and I promptly thanked her:-
Dear Leah,
Thank you for responding on Nicola’s behalf.
On reading back through the email this morning I realised that I should have asked Nicola to pass a copy of it to John Rumney as there are some serious legal points to be gone over before Nicola even considers her response.
The serious legal points were raised in the attached signed letter, Conflation of Complaints and for this reason it was copied to Mr J Rumney, Corporate Lead Legal & Governance at STC.
My optimism was short lived as I received no response in the week commencing 4th January nor anything from the Council until I received a Contact Restrictions Letter from the Performance and Information Team nearly four months.
They said that the contact restrictions which had been lifted on the 28th August 2018 were to be reimposed because those in control of the Council in April 2021, Cllr Dixon and J Rumney, saw which way my exploration or our shared time line was heading and did not wish for the truth about the shed’s height to be revealed.
When the approved documents from 1996 were recovered in September 2013 they would have shown that the shed was nearly 3m taller than permitted and STC forced UK Docks to stop work on their shed which effectively closed the boat or shipyard from 23rd, see page 2.
At the meeting of 25-Nov-13, Cllr Anglin, by saying the shed was legal, was implying that the shed had approval but it did not have approval and both the Principal Planning Officer and I knew that. He let it go and I was not given the opportunity to question the Councillor about it. Work restarted on the shed within days of the meeting.
When the big cranes arrived in the yard to lift the overhead crane I decided enough was enough and put in a formal complaint, 10-Jan-14, which left them in a fix because I raised the question:- As the applicant has not discharged condition 2 why is there no retrospective planning application?
The first response was from the Principal Planning Office, Mr Cunningham, who referred me back to the meeting of the 25th November where we had been told that UK Docks had discharged the second condition and that left the Planning Manager, Mr Atkinson, in a very bad place because he knew as well as I did that UK Docks had not discharged 2nd condition.
What I did not know but he knew was that he would never have to defend Mr Cunningham’s reprehensible actions in a Court of Law and instead of shutting down UK Docks works and reprimanding his Principal Planning Officer he chose to set up the trail of deceit by claiming that UK Docks had approval for their shed in January 2014 and ended with you asking me to give it a rest in April 2023.
It looks like Mr Buck had been requisitioned to claim that I had been making vexatious emails or calls and thank you again, though it may not have been your intention, for uncovering the fact that it was most likely to have been either or both, the Leader of the Council or his Interim Head of Legal Services, who in early 2020 who had persuaded Mr Buck to act as he did.
Your sincerely
Michael Dawson