It has been very clear for some time, over 10 years in fact, that South Tyneside Council have been giving misinformation to the Ombudsman to hide malpractice of their Planning Staff and it is reasonable to assume that the procedures used to achieve this are not exclusive to the Planning Office in South Shields Town Hall, nor indeed, to Tyneside.
Mick Dawson, March 2024
UK Docks knew that their shed was taller and wider than permitted and so did South Tyneside Council because the plans approved in 1996 and 2013 showed that fact to be true. It was the Council who appear to have been persuaded by a powerful lobby to hide the fact while plans to lengthen it were submitted by UK Docks.
The powerful lobby included those who use the shed for the maintenance of their vessels, the UK Government who own Coastal Patrol Vessels, the Port of Tyne who run a Pilot Service in the lower reaches of the Tyne and the Nexus Ferry Service.
South Tyneside Council knew that the footpath that ran along the riverbank, beside a Call Centre had been used by the public since the call centre was first opened. It was later closed with the Council’s permission for the benefit of those who were party to the Call Centre’s redevelopment into flats, and also those who lived in the adjoining terrace, 22-26 Long Row South Shields.
They too overlooked the footpath which partly touched the riverbank of the Tyne as shown in the photo:-
The Document below – Introduction, Approved v Non-Approved Drawings etc. was the attachment to an important email and it shows that the section of the Local Government Ombudsman that deals with Planning Matters is either incompetent or corrupt as some of those in South Tyneside Counci.
It is ten years since the two large cranes arrived beside the slipway off River Drive in South Shields. They were there to lift an overhead crane into the additional roof space of the slipway shed, cover or enclosure was awarded after South Tyneside Council had withheld plans and drawings that showed the shed to be 3m taller than the permission granted in 1996. The additional space was about 3m high, 13m wide and ran for the entire length of the shed and one only has to look at the plans approved in August 2013 to see the truth of this.
Dear Harry and Everyone,
Everyone, were those copied into email’s Bcc and included, the MP for South Shields, the Constituency Support Manager for the MP for Berwick, the Chief Executive, and the Head of the Council’s Legal Team, the ‘Monitoring Officer’ who has been handling our complaint that UK Dock’s ‘Shed’ is 3m taller than planned, those who attended the meeting in March 2014 where we decided to raise a Petition and finally, a few of those who were also aware that the shed had been built without planning permission.
Please see the attached document, provided to back the Trail of Deceit.
It describes a trail which began in September 2013 when a planning officer in South Tyneside Council told the protestors that the structure being erected near the mouth of the Tyne in South Shields had been given approval when it hadn’t and it looks like he was being economical with the truth because the Council’s Enforcement Officers stopped work in the yard about two weeks after it had begun when an approved document was recovered from the Council’s archives.
By the end of 2013, I had discovered with the help of another local resident, that there were also plans that had been approved by the Planning Manager a few weeks before the structure that was to become a large enclosure on a slipway (was began). Those plans proved that it was built nearly 3m taller than permitted.
Meanwhile at a meeting was held in the Town Hall on November 25th 2013, the original planning officer had gathered 4 persons who were prepared to support him in maintaining the lie about the shed’s height being approved and UK Docks were allowed to restart work on their shed in spite of the fact he would have known that one of the two approved drawing from 1996 would prove all five of them were perpetuating the misrepresentation made by UK Docks two and half months earlier.
By the time my complaint about the shed’s height, on behalf of the protestors was submitted, the tracks for the gantry crane had been fitted and that left the Planning Manager with a problem. He should, of course, have told UK Docks to stop work on the shed and they were in no position to protest as it could be easily shown that their claim that they had approval it was actually fraudulent.
He chose not to and because planning officers appear to be beyond the law, he was persuaded to back his Principal Planning Officer rather than reprimand him for gross misconduct and he achieved this by removing the original complaint from the public domain and adding to the misinformation about the shed’s height:-
So it went on, firstly with the Head of Development Services overwriting the fact that the original and one and only complaint that the shed was taller than planned had been deleted and enabled the fraud that UK Docks had approval for the shed to be repeated to the Ombudsman so that I, along with any of the other protestors could be falsely accused of making allegations.
Finally, to avoid being honest about the shed’s height a scheme was put in place to silence me by the misuse of a staff code in mid 2016 and although it fell into disuse it was revived by the Council Leader in 2021 on the advice of the Interim Head of Legal Services and is currently being exploited each April by the Chief Executive because he, like his predecessor has no wish to be honest about the shed’s height.
Yours sincerely
Michael Dawson
Covering Email to Trail of Deceit
Full Trail:- Evidence-Trail-6-Nov-23.pdf
Dear Mr Harlow,
My combined email/letter of the 25th September had been incorrectly titled SDCandC-Petition, it has now been posted to the website as STCandC-Petition. You did respond within a few minutes but it was not to correct my error but to complain that I had annoyed you.
I believe thanking you for letting me know from where Mr Simon Buck got the idea to falsely accuse me of making vexatious calls to an MP’s office, was not harassment but a rather generous thank you:- “Thank you for making me look again at the process by which the South Tyneside Council misuse their own Complaints Procedure to hide malpractice of their planning staff and their manager.
I concede that I was being somewhat disingenuous because I reported that you had made the comment, Will you just give it a rest mate!, against a website Post rather than a Page because comments are not normally made against pages in WordPress.
I have also taken the opportunity to correct some of the other minor mistakes made in post, STC and Corruption – Petition.
I have no intention of giving it a rest until South Tyneside Council (STC) accept that I was correct when I complained in January 2014 that the slipway enclosure (shed) built by UK Docks on their slipway off River Drive is nearly 3m taller than planned. Unless one works there or derives some income from it, what is done about the shed is not important but as long as it remains, it is a symbol of the corruption that is endemic within STC.
It appears that you were attempting to present yourself as Mr Buck by using the email address of simonwrs@gmail.com against a page where I describe how he threatened me with the misuse of a Parliamentary Code. Maybe you did not know that the disgraced Mr Buck should be keeping his head down he after he had falsely accused me of flouting of parliamentary rules but it now appears that you did by making the one word comment YAWN against the post, Contact Restrictions Review on May 12th.
You were not to know that he had removed the email shown below from the MP for South Shields inbox which is probably a prosecutable offence.
Re: Complaint: 248789 – Unplanned Development on River Drive Date: 13/01/2020 (22:05:29 BST) From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk To: Emma Lewell-Buck MP Cc: Keith Palmer, Cllr Angela Hamilton, Cllr David Francis, Cllr Anglin Attachment: 8DLL.pdf (108 KB)
Dear Emma,
I answered a call today from a Mr Keith Palmer on 01914271240 and we spoke about UK Docks. Judging from the email address he gave me, I guess he must be your office manager in South Shields and from our conversation I gathered he did not wish to consider any further correspondence from me and suggested that because I now lived away you/he would not be able to deal with correspondence because of parliamentary rules. . .
Please note that the copy of the letter from Peter Dunn and Co was sent to Emma and not to Mr Buck. Nor was it copied to Mr Buck yet it was he who responded to the second email, sent to Emma early on the 14th:-
Jennifer Brooks is the MP for Berwick’s Constituency Support Manager and it was Hayley Johnson who misinformed the MP when she told the MP in 2015 that we (Mr Dawson and other local residents) were making allegations when we were not.
Nicola was Monitoring Officer who swept everthing to do with UK Docks under the carpet when she kept repeating “It remains the case that all complaints procedures relating to this matter have been exhausted both internally within the Council and externally”.
Re: Ombudsman Response to MP From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk Date: 10/10/2023 (17:14:11 BST) To: BROOKS, Jennifer Cc: Emma Lewell-Buck MP, Hayley Johnson, Nicola Robason 3 Attachments: 23 09 23 LTR LGO to REP complaint invalid.pdf DearJen10-Oct-23.pdf General letter to PA.pdf Dear Jen Please see my response to Mr Heath's Final Decision statement, 23 09 23 LTR LGO to REP and the General letter to PA was Mr Lewis' response. Hopefully I'll post DearJen10-Oct-23 to thehabourview.co.uk over the next couple of days and when I've done that I will copy it to the others who have apparently been making allegations about UK Docks shed. Hayley is the Corporate Lead who has been giving misinformation to Anne-Marie and Nicola was for a few years the Monitoring Officer for South Tyneside Council. I do not seem to have an email address for Mr Heath Cheers Mick Dawson
Dear Jen,
Thank you for the copy of the letter sent by Mr R Heath, an Inspector for the Ombudsman, to Anne-Marie Trevelyan on the 26th September.
He first tells us that he is acting in line with a code which says:-
The Ombudsman’s enabling legislation allows him to decide which complaints he wishes to pursue. While we aim to help people where we can, and where we decide it is appropriate to do so, the law places restrictions on our work and we operate with limited resources. That means we only look at what we decide are the most significant and serious complaints.
I personally think that giving misinformation/misrepresentation to the Local Government Ombudsman is a very serious offence but he appears to be content to let evidence that South Tyneside Council have been giving them misinformation be destroyed, when he says:-
We no longer hold any documents relating to the complaint, the decision or our consideration ofthe complaint, in line with our data retention policy, and the time for challenging the decision has long since passed.
That was with regard to their investigation 14015052 carried out in 2015 and he fares no better with their second investigation:-
I note Mr Dawson has also previously attempted to challenge the decision as part of another complaint to this Office in 2017 under the reference 17001436 but that we declined to take the matter further at that time. We closed this case more than six years ago on the basis we had already considered and decided the issues raised and again, documents relating to the case have been deleted.
The second Inspector, Mr P Lewis, conflated the complaint that a shipyard slipway enclosure on Tyneside was 3m taller than permitted, with the second complaint, that South Tyneside Council had lied to the first Inspector, when they said that the shed was not taller than any approved document allowed.
Mr Lewis then consigned the separate complaints, that the slipway shed was taller than planned and that South Tyneside Council had been giving misinformation to the Ombudsman to the waste bin:-
I consider that your latest complaint remains that of your previous complaint which has already been determined (whether or not to your satisfaction) and the opportunity to request a review of that decision has passed.
I will treat your complaint therefore as invalid and your complaint will not be investigated.
You said in your covering email of the 5th that Mr Heath’s response would not be the response I was hoping for but I think it only goes to show that the office of the Local Government Ombudsman has been corrupt for some time and the planning officers and their managers of South Tyneside Council were aware (of that) as long as I have had anything to do with them. It started in 2013 or possibly a bit earlier when they left me no choice but to resort to the Ombudsman to establish that an immediate neighbour did not have permission for the redevelopment of his property.
That was water under the bridge but it showed me the importance of keeping an accurate record of drawings and plans and how they were being referenced and here I refer to correspondence between South Tyneside Council and the MP for Berwick in 2015 about the shipyard slipway enclosure or shed on the banks of the Tyne, when I discovered that the Council were using the Ombudsman’s findings to misinform her.
I had suspected that the Council was misinforming the Ombudsman, to push through favoured projects without planning permission but needed some evidence i.e. something in print to back my suspicions. I had explained to the MP for Berwick that the shed was taller than planned but the Council’s Corporate Lead told her otherwise.
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.
I repeat, if the approved plan or drawings indicate that a structure is nearly 3m taller than planned it is not an allegation to say it is taller than planned, it is the truth and it is therefore a lie, to tell LGO Inspectors, MPs and others, including myself, that it is not taller than planned.
Two MPs, because while I was corresponding with the first Inspector it became obvious that she was being misinformed and I raised the issue about the conduct of the Council’s Planning Officers with the MP for South Shields but someone had noticed that (I) had taken up lodging in Amble and the case ended up with the MP for Berwick.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan then had, not only the case notes given by me to Emma Lewell-Buck in March 2015, but some additional information sent three months later which I had copied to the Chief Executive of South Tyneside Council. I had added, knowing full well there no approved drawings to show that the shed was the permitted height:- “If Mr Swales provides any new plans to show you that I am wrong in my assessment of the development on River Drive by UK Docks please let me know.
As you can see the Chief Executive asked one of his officers to accuse I and others of making allegations about the shed’s height and I was not at all pleased about it and when I moved back to South Shields I decided to challenge him again about his officers giving misinformation to the Ombudsman and wrote to him on the 8th July 2016 explaining that the shed was built without planning permission and asking:-
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.
He was well and truly trapped because he either had to lie about his staff giving misinformation to the Ombudsman or explain why his staff were giving misinformation to the LGO but he played his get out of jail free card by asking his Corporate Lead who had already misinformed Anne-Marie by accusing us of making allegations about the shed, to misuse Section (F) of a Staff Code to remove the need to answer the question:-
I now consider this matter closed. Should you continue to repeat historic complaint issues in your contacts, we will consider imposing formal restrictions on your contact with the Council. Should you continue to repeat this same complaint already investigated by the Council or the Ombudsman, including historical plans or perceived misinformation, we will not acknowledge, or respond to those communications.
Part of the answer is that the Chief Executive and his staff can rely on Inspectors like Messrs Heath and Lewis to make sure that the truth about shed remains hidden and it appears from here that giving misinformation to LGO would be better described as fraudulent misrepresentation.
That in turn raises the question: who profits from giving misinformation/misrepresentation to the Local Government Ombudsman?
Kind regards
Michael Dawson
Full copy of pdf file: STC and Corruption
More than nine years ago, the Planning Manager agreed with me as one of the main protestors that the enclosure, on the slipway, in UK Docks boat repair yard off River Drive was nearly 3 meters taller than permitted. South Tyneside Council had done little but deny the fact that it was taller than planned for five months, by withholding the approved plan which showed the enclosure or shed was 2.7m taller than what had been approved 8296/2, and we decided to raise a Petition:-
3.3.2014 To the Chief Executive STMBC, The attached signatories are concerned about recent developments at Tyne Slipway and Engineering Ltd, River Drive, South Shields. We protest at: 1. A lack of relevant information from STMBC 2. A lack of public consultation on the unannounced construction 3. Lack of research and impact surveys 4. Apparent negligence by STMBC 5. Apparent breach of planning law by the developers We are concerned that by its actions in this case STMBC is in breach of its own Local Development Framework Core Strategy Objectives, eg. "to protect and enhance the boroughs coastline and water frontage; to ensure that the individual and cumulative effects of development do not breach noise, hazardous substances or pollution limits; to increase public involvement in decision making and civic activity". Local residents wish to live in peace and harmony with appropriate light industry as we have for many years, supporting the cultural heritage and environment of the area for the benefit of residents and visitors. We believe the new development at Tyne Slipway threatens to disrupt this. Yours sincerely, Signatories attached
The response to the Petition was not from the Chief Executive but from the Head of Development Services. It was in the form of a letter, sent to addresses in top third of Greens Place on the Lawtop and all of those in Harbour View, South Shields, on the 2nd May 2014 and it contained a lie.
Continue readingSouth Tyneside Council and Corruption From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk Date: 19/07/2023, 16:56:27 BST To: Jennifer Brooks Cc: Emma Lewell-Buck MP, Nicola Robason, Alison Hoy 2 Attachments: Duplicity Exposed.pdf (80 KB)
Heart of Shed and Corruption.pdf (117 KB)
Jennifer Brooks is the Constituency Manager for the MP for Berwick and the email of the 19th July started with an apology and went on to explain its purpose:- “Please forgive me for leaving this so late in the current session of Parliament for writing to you but I wish to to let you know that that I will be publishing the attached document, ‘Duplicity Exposed’ on my website tomorrow.
It was to let her know in response to a question she had raised in June about giving misinformation to the Ombudsman and that if I had evidence that South Tyneside Council were giving it, then I should contact the Ombudsman about it and request that my case is looked at again with correct information.
I explained that I had attempted to contact the Local Government Ombudsman directly and it had failed and the main reason was because if the truth had come to light, it would have confirmed that South Tyneside Council had given them misinformation to hide the corruption rooted in the Council’s Planning Office and centred on the duplicity of the Council’s Planning Manager which was explained in the first of the attached documents.
The other attachment was to provide Jennifer with additional information. It stemmed from a letter to Anne-Marie written in 2022 and posted as Part 18 of the Shed and Corruption Series.
Hiding the Duplicity of the Planning Manager
On April 13th I received a message from a simonwrs@gmail.com attached to a page with the title Threat: Simon Buck, 26-Feb-20 and it was received with a great deal of scepticism on my part. You can tell this from the content of the email sent to the person delegated hide the truth behind UK Docks’ shed built on their slipway off River Drive on the South Bank of the Tyne in South Shields on the 28th April 2023.
Ms Hoy has been used by various South Tyneside Council officers to misdirect correspondence to the South Tyneside Council, as shown in Part 8 of Shed and Corruption and she has quite accurately recorded not only emails that have either been sent or copied to Customer Advocacy but also one or two that have neither been sent or copied to her.
It appears that is not only I who has been questioning them about truth of the claims made by Council Officers and Councillors about UK Docks’ shed.
When determining whether a development has permission or not, it would seem reasonable to refer to plans and drawings that have been approved by the relevant body and it should be a given that any that have not been approved should be discarded. Also when sharing a timeline with a council and people complaining about the conduct of its officers, one has to pay particular attention to the sequence of events.
As you can see from Part 8 of Shed and Corruption, Ms Hoy had been used by South Tyneside Council for a number of years to divert attention from the amount of misinformation given to the Ombudsman by planning officers. With regards to the shed, it was her letter of the 9-Dec-15 that I took to a solicitor in Sunderland, but it was not the first time she had called upon to redirect a question.
Re: Minister Response
Date: 26/06/2023 (15:22:31 BST)
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
To: BROOKS, Jennifer
Attachments:
No71-and-Corruption.pdf (265 KB)
LGOexcusesPL30May17.pdf (82 KB)
Dear Jen
Please thank Anne-Marie for referring the case about Local Councils giving misinformation to the Ombudsman to the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Local Government and Building Safety, Lee Rowley MP and I thank him for his response.
Thank you for the suggestion that I contact the Ombudsman and ask for them to look at the case again with correct information but it seems that you are not aware that I have attempted to do this on two occasions and failed.
The first concerned the party wall between a neighbour and my home and was a simple matter of whether a planning officer had followed the Council’s own guidelines and plans for such things. They plainly had not done so but told the Ombudsman that they had. A local architect was then persuaded to provide plans so the neighbour need not have to apply retrospectively to show that he had permission the development of the property. Please see attached file: No71-and-Corruption.pdf.
The second concerned the enclosure, or shed on the slipway off River Drive operated by UK Docks and was simply a matter of whether it had planning permission or not. It had not and even South Tyneside Council agreed with all the protestors and that it was built without planning permission but the Council claimed it is not taller and only marginally wider than planned. One only has see the plans approved by the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation in 1996 to see that it is actually nearly 3m taller than permitted and the Council first hid this fact by giving misinformation and or misrepresentation to the Ombudsman.
Anne-Marie picked this up very quickly in 2015 but the Council implied that we were lying when they told her on the 25th June:- “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.
To save having to admit that they were fraudulently misrepresenting plans to the Ombudsman a scheme was devised in 2016 whereby they could close down any dialogue by the misuse of their own staff code and allowed them say things such as:- “There is no evidence to suggest that there has been deliberate misinformation provided by Council officers to the Local Government Ombudsman.
Two weeks ago the former Prime minister was found to have deliberately misled Parliament about so-called partygate and while I do not think he would have been even remotely aware of the example provided by South Tyneside Council nearly 7 years ago, the choice of the word deliberate does illustrate a dark link between a Council acting corruptly and a political leader trying to avoid justice.
You should have a copy of Shed and Corruption: A summary of Parts, 1 to 19 (Sum-Parts-1-19.pdf) which I sent on 23rd February and as it says, it is a summary of nearly ten years of having to deal with one after another of those who were determined to hide the fact that UK Docks did not have permission for structure erected on their slipway off River Drive in South Shields.
There are a number of minor corrections that should be made, for instance at the top of page 8, “you and I met at a Labour Party meeting” should have been corrected to Emma and I etc. but that is trivial compared to the amount of misinformation given to the Ombudsman and in particular the conflation by the second Ombudsman, Mr P Lewis of the original complaint, that the shed was taller than permitted, with the complaint that the Council were giving misinformation to the Ombudsman.
It was my exchange with Mr Lewis, please see attached commentary on his letter of the 30th May 2017, LGOexcusesPL30May17.pdf that made me think that we may be putting the cart before the horse in all that has gone on with UK Docks over the last nine years and by that I mean that Mr Lewis has clearly shown that he has no interest in the truth and was going to find for a Council regardless of the evidence provided.
To put this another way, South Tyneside knew they could get away with being economical with the truth because the Local Government Ombudsman was as corrupt as they were.
Kind regards
Michael Dawson
PS. I have removed the personal detail from both Mr Rowley’s and your letters so that I can upload them to my website and feel free to use any of my references.
Quoting “BROOKS, Jennifer” jennifer.brooks@parliament.uk :
Dear Mr Dawson,
Anne-Marie contacted The Rt Hon Michael Gove Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities regarding your case and highlighted your concerns about discrepancies with the information given to the Local Government Ombudsman by the local authority in your case. Anne-Marie also asked if the Government are considering bringing forward any legislation which holds councils accountable for providing false information to the Ombudsman.
Please see attached the response she has received from Lee Rowley MP Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Local Government and Building Safety. Minister do not get involved with individual cases however Mr Rowley says ‘the Ombudsman will review a decision he has taken, including when a decision was based on inaccurate evidence’, therefore I would strongly suggest that if you believe this to be the case and have evidence that South Tyneside Council provided the Ombudsman with misinformation then you should contact the Ombudsman about this and request that your case is looked at again with the correct information.
Kind regards,
Jen
Jennifer Brooks
Constituency Support Manager
01665 517512
Please note I work part-time therefore sometimes I may take a little
longer to reply to your email
__________________________________________
Rt Hon Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP
Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed
Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
21A The Hotspur, Bondgate Without, Alnwick, Northumberland, NE66 1PR
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