A meeting had been held in the South Shields Town Hall on November-25-2013 to establish whether UK Docks had permission to complete the structure being erected on their slipway and the meeting closed when their shed was said to be ‘legal’ implying that it had been built according to approved plans.
The were no minutes taken of the Town Hall meeting but the minutes of the follow-up meeting, held by the TGA some six hours later reflected quite accurately what happened in the afternoon with the exception of one major piece of misinformation:- GW advised that it was a good open meeting, it was confirmed that the structure is being built to the plans which had been approved.
It was not being built to any plans that had been approved but UK Docks must have been told that they could restart work within a few days of those two meetings where Mr Haig had repeated to the TGA that the shed was not illegal to mean it had approval:- 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.
It meant that more than just the Principal Planning Officer was conspiring to let UK Docks off the hook. There was a Councillor, the Chair and Treasurer of the TGA as well.
We discovered about two weeks after the meeting that the ‘Proper drawings’ had not been approved but it was not until the large cranes arrived in the new year to fit the travelling crane in the extra roof space we had proof that the staff in charge of enforcement had been persuaded that UK Docks had approval for their shed and a complaint was raised about nothing being done to stop work on the shed in January 2014:-
I notice that work on this site has recommenced in the last day or so and I am surprised as there is still an outstanding issue which I think has not been addressed. The issue relates to the second condition of planning permission granted under ST/0242/96/UD which has not been met. This condition states:- “The development to which this permission relates shall be carried out in complete accordance with the approved plans and specifications”.
As shown in the “Commentary” UK Docks did not stop work on their shed even after it became obvious that they had no right to continue with any work on it with the publication of Decision Notice ST/1146/13/COND which included drawing 8296/14, in late December 2013.
About the same time I had become aware that South Tyneside Council were giving misinformation and or misrepresentation Local Government Ombudsman to hide wrongdoing by their planning officers with regard to rebuild of the property next to where I lived. The rebuild, like that of UK Docks’ shed did not comply with the approved drawing but the Planning Officers had a way found a way of avoiding the truth by asking the agent/architect to redraw what a had been built to overwrite what had been approved.
I thought that they would not try the same sharp practice with UK Docks as the approved plans clearly showed their shed was taller than permitted but it seems that the Council did not need to rely on anyone redraw the shed as they had recovered a drawing from 1966 which contained an error in the height of the landward end of the shed.
It had never been approved but South Tyneside Council got round that problem by their Head of Development Services rewriting the complaint which had referenced an approved drawing from late 2013 with a complaint of his own, that had referenced the unapproved drawing from 1996 secure in the knowledge that he could rely on the Ombudsman being party to his fraudulent misrepresentation rather any true observation about the plans and drawings.
I chose the latter and completed the online form on 10th December 2014 the main point being that the shed was taller than planned:- It took another 2 and a half months of emails back and forth for the Planning Manager, Mr Gordon Atkinson to concede that it was 3 meters too high as well.
When I read it back, it seems to be a fairly concise version of the Commentary with the exception of the statement:-
In all my correspondences with Mr Atkinson, the manager of the Planning Office, I do not think he said that the drawing 8296/14 was not to scale.
I was wrong, he had said that the drawing, 8296/14, was not to scale after admitting that the shed was taller than planned on the 13th February with specific reference to it. To anyone discussing plans or drawings it was utter nonsense and I had dismissed it as irrelevant at the time. More seriously, he asked why I had questioned his assumption that the gable end shown was its southern end: why did we determine the elevation on 8296/14 is the south end?
The southern end is the landward end and one would assume it was common knowledge that boats enter a boat from a river or lake. He should also have been aware, as was I, and the author of the so called Stage 3 Response presented to the Ombudsman confirmed it when she said: that 8296/14 could never supersede the previously approved plans in terms of defining the dimensions of the approved development.
Three months after the submission we get a response from the LGO. I can say we when the original complaint was raised on behalf of all of those who were protesting about UK Docks shed but unfortunately I was their sole representative at the meeting held in the Town Hall in November 2013. There were nearly a couple of dozen who met at the TGA AGM of the 9th November