On Fraudulent Misrepresentation: 2013 – 2014
The Principal Planning Officer refused to answer direct questions about the size of the shed so the residents tried to involve the MP but were met with a poor response because the officers of South Tyneside Council were also feeding her or her agent with misinformation and refusing to answer questions as directed by the FoI Act.
The newly elected MP, Emma Lewell-Buck, was not to blame for she had only been in post for six months and South Tyneside Council were happy to give her the same misinformation that was being pumped out by their staff over the phone to the Local Residents.
The Residents then decided to resurrect the Tyne Gateway Assn (TGA) which turned out to be a mistake because, with the interference of Cllrs Anglin and Macmillan its two main posts, the Treasurer and Chair were allocated to a director and procurement officer of HB Hydraulics. A firm based at that time in Portsmouth.
At a meeting in November 2013 to arranged to review the grant given to Tyne Slipway in 1996, no valid plans were produced because they would have shown that the Residents were correct when they complained that the structure being erected on the slipway was taller than planned and, to put it bluntly, the Principal Planning Officer was being economical with the truth when he allowed it to be reported that the shed was ‘legal’ to mean it had been approved. However, actions speak louder than words and it was he who passed the drawings to the author of the website, theharbourview.co.uk, Mick Dawson to maintain the fraud the UK Docks had permission for their shed.
I had been aware of the fundamental flaw in the second drawing 8296/1B which had been passed to the protestors in September 2013 and showed both ends of the shed having the same height and why I took an interest in the TGA but when I realised that they were going nowhere under the command of Messrs Haig and Watson, I took the challenge directly to the Council and was passed a copy of drawing 8296/1A by the Principal Planning Officer, Mr P Cunningham on the 20th December 2013. This contained the same flaw as 8296/1B and was presumably why it had not been approved.
The flaw is that the landward end of the shed is shown to have a height of 15.5m when the approved plan shows that the planned height at that end should be 12.7m. Any planning officer would have to agree that the difference is a material consideration when making decisions about this planning application.
One of the Ward Councillors was clearly working with the Principal Planning Officer at the meeting to suppress the fact that the shed was too tall and I had tried to alert the Committee of the TGA to what was going but failed, and not being an Executive Member of the TGA, decided to raise a complaint on behalf of the residents who had not been invited to the meeting of the 25th November 2013.
It got nowhere, because the complaint about the shed’s height and width was removed from Planning Enquiries by the combined actions of the Head of Development Services and his planning officers. I had criticized them in a letter to him on April 4th, with particular reference to an article in the local press about UK Docks’ shed, saying:-
To cap it all there was an article in the local paper on Apr 1st showing most flattering photograph of the offending shed saying that it was only 36ft high. The author of the article may have got away with saying that in September but not now. You should know that it is over 50 ft high and that is what we have been saying for months now. It’s planned height is about 42ft.
On the 2nd of May I had written to him complaining about the lack of action by his staff re the shed on River Drive:-
Dear Mr Mansbridge,
It (is) a month since I sent Mr Atkinson an email on behalf of the residents affected by the redevelopment of the UK Docks site on River Drive and I have not received a satisfactory reply to the request that STC Planning Office meet with the residents to explain their action or rather lack of it over the slipway shed on River Drive.
The main point being the propagation of misinformation by the Council, epecially with respect to the height of UK Docks Shed and my message ends:- I ask again that the working at UK Docks Slipway on River Drive be stopped until this issue is resolved.
It may not have arrived before he sent out his response to to our petition, that was also dated 2nd May, but that is hardly relevant as it was apparent that a neighbour had written to him on the 27th March:-
As Gordon Atkinson subsequently conceded when confronted with incontrovertible evidence from my neighbour Mr M. Dawson, and apparently STMBC’s own legal advisors, the structure has not been built in accordance with any approved plan.
On 18.9.2013, Gordon Atkinson wrote to tell me that “the dimensions of the steelwork have been checked on site and they are in accordance with the measurements shown on the approved drawings”. This turns out not to be true.
It would appear that Mr Atkinson was not only telling tales to Matthew and myself but he was repeating them to his manager, Mr Mansbridge, because one of the main claims in response to the Petition was:- The approved dimensions of the steelwork are: • Proposed height 15.5m at the River Drive end.
I was not happy his response which had been delivered to 66 to 99 Greens Place and all of those in Harbour View and took the trouble to make him aware of it on May the 9th, my main point being, that to say that the River Drive end of the shed has an approved height of 15.5m was a lie:-
This is not true, there is no supporting documentation which says that the approved height is 15.5m at the River Drive end. All indications are that the approved height is 12.5m which one can get from scaling the portal details in the Drawing 8296/14.
I had also gone on to say, “In the light of this please consider a correction to the letters sent to the households 66 to 99 Greens Place and all the households in Harbour View