Fountain of Misinformation – Part 9B

Posted on April 7, 2022 by moderator

Someone at a very high level in the chain of command at the Town Hall had taken the decision as the complaints started to roll in about the height of the structure being built  on one of two slipways on the Tyne still in use in September 2013, to hide the fact that it was nearly 3m taller than planned and that was done to hide that fact that Building Control were not in control. It appears that Mr Telford, the building inspector in charge of the site had been given the same set of plans given to the Principal Planning Manager by UK Docks and passed to the local residents in September 2013.

When you bear in mind that the control of both slipways used for the repair and maintenace of Tyne Ferries were at one time held by one family you will understand why the most recent posts about the shed on the slipway off River Drive are labelled ‘Shed and Corruption’.

This post is an update to an extract from my email to Mrs Johnson written on the 2nd September 2016. It is a list of corrections to the misrepresentations made on behalf of the Chief Executive by her on 1-Aug- 2016:-
Continue reading →

Posted in Abuse of Complaints System, Corruption, Evasion | Leave a comment

Revision of Part 12 of Shed and Corruption

Posted on April 4, 2022 by moderator

The River End of the Enclosure

The Cycle of Deceit.

When the local residents started to complain about the structure being erected on the slipway off River Drive, they were passed drawings by the Principal Planning Officer, Mr P Cunningham, to back a claim made by him,  that UK Docks had approval for it on the 11th September 2013.

The shed is not far off being rectangular and one only had to glance at the drawing from which the clip of the river end of the enclosure or shed was taken, to see that something was wrong. It did not reflect what was being built and this was compounded by the fact that we were not told of its dimensions.  We discovered soon after the Tyne Gateway Assn (TGA) was revived about a month later, that it’s height at the landward end was 15.5m making the height at the river end 18.2m, the gradient of the slipway being 2.7m. Not the 15.5m as shown in the clip.

Apart from discovering in 2013, that the shed was 2.7m taller than planned in 1996, the TGA failed because it was taken over by two local residents who became the Chair and the Treasurer and who, along with two of the Ward Councillors, as was explained in Part 1 of the Shed and Corruption series but what did not come across is why the two residents who were in control of the TGA, Messrs Watson and Haig had changed sides from those who knew it to be taller than permitted to those who claimed it had been authorised at the meeting with the Principal Planning Officer on 25th November 2013 .

We are never going to know the real reason but taken into context, it looks like the best reason is given in the review made in June 2022 where ST/0749/13/FUL was overwritten by ST/0749/13/HFUL (page 2). In the review I said:- Mr Haig by persuading South Tyneside Council to withdraw the requirement for the redevelopment of No. 71 to be looked at retrospectively.

My assesmment of the situation was totally wrong; it appears that if Mr Haig  and his employee Mr Watson were prepared to claim that UK Docks had approval for the shed South Tyneside Council would hide the fact that his party wall between Nos 70 and 71 Greens place was built without planning permission (page2). I had complained about the party wall and that gave rise to ST/0749/13/FUL. Approval for the switch from ../FUL to ../HFUL by planning officer Ms C Matten was given by the Planning Manager, Mr Atkinson a mere ten days after Mr Haig had claimed that UK Docks had approval for their shed by reference to a ‘proper’ drawing.

The reference is from the TGA minutes as no minutes were taken of the meeting of 25th November 2013 held in the Town Hall some six hours earlier. The ‘proper’ drawing was either 8296/1A or /1B, both of which were unauthorised because they contained a major error in the dimension of its landward end. It should be between 12.5m and 12.8m (a foot difference)  not 15.5m (10 feet difference).

Two months after the meeting with Mr Cunningham, I was forwarded an approved plan, 8296/2, by his manager which showed that we had been misled when Mr Cunningham and co. had implied that UK Docks had approval for their shed. His manager, Mr Atkinson, by mid January 2014, had sided with those who claimed that UK Docks had approval for their shed:-

  1. Gazette, 9-Sep: A spokesman for the applicant, UK Docks, said: “All I can say is that we have been through all the controls with the planners, and the work meets all the necessary legal requirements;
  2. Planning Officer, 11-Sep: RE; Approved boat repair shelter at Tyne Slipway, River Drive;
  3. Cllr Anglin, 1-Dec: The Exec representatives of the Group accepted that the construction had been made legally as per drawings seen.
  4. Cllr Anglin, 19-Dec: Please see below the reply from Peter.”Hello – I confirmed at our meeting with Mr Dawson and others on 25th Sept Nov 2013 that I had measured the width and length of the ground floor external footprint and height of the structure and that these dimensions were all in accordance with the attached approved drawing and planning permission…I copied these two documents to Mr Dawson after the meeting as per his request.
  5. Planning Officer, 20-Dec: Mr Dawson – once again – I have measured this on site and have copied the 1996 plans across to you twice already (attached again for your use) and I have explained during our meeting that the base and height of the structure are compliant…this is the end of the matter as far as I am concerned. Please do not email me again.
  6. Planning Manager, 15-Jan: Approved Drawings; The drawing that was submitted on 11th April 1996 with the application is numbered
    8296/1A. That shows the overall height of the structure as 15.5m above the foundation level at the landward end.

Both the Planning Officer, Mr Cunningham and his Manager Mr Atkinson, knew as well as I did that the shed was about 3m taller than permitted so why were they and the Councillor so keen to deny it.

There is a twist to this tale of lies and deception. When the Planning Manager had conceded that the shed was indeed 2.7m too tall we held a meeting in the South Shields Sailing Club on March 3rd to decide a way forward and that was to raise a Petition and that I was to write and thank him for agreeing with us about the shed’s height.

We held the meeting because he had admitted that we were correct about the shed’s height but UK Docks set about completeing their shed with even more vigour despite our protests.

The issue was not complex at all – see post 8296/2.

The Petition about the misdoings of South Tynside Council was  presented at the Town Hall on April 3rd 2014 for the attention of the Chief Executive. The  response was not from him but from Mr Mansbridge  on May 2nd who repeated the lie made by the Planning Manager in mid January:  Approved Drawings: The drawing that was submitted on 11th April 1996 with the application is numbered 8296/1A. That shows the overall height of the structure as 15.5m above the foundation level at the landward end.

Mr Mansbridge worded it slightly differently in his response to some householders in Greens Place and Harbour View but omitted the drawing reference for obvious reason that he was quoting from a drawing 8296/1A that had not been approved. The height of landward end of the shed was written as 15.5m. It should have been 12.7 or 12.8m.
The approved dimensions of the steelwork are:
• Proposed height 15.5m at the River Drive end. The gradient of the slipway is 2.66m over the length of the shelter. This would mean the height at the riverside end would be 18.16m above the slipway;
• Proposed length 22m;
• Proposed width 12.2m. 

Mr Mansbridge had already repeated the lie about the shed’s height to a neighbour on the 29th April:- The Development Permitted in 1996
The approved dimensions of the steelwork, taken from drawing number 8396/1A show: • The proposed height as 15.5m at the River Drive end. 

I wrote and asked him to correct his fraudulent misrepresentation of the shed’s height in his response but it was never done because my email of the 9th May to him was passed back to his Planning Manager who had passed it up the management a few weeks before on April the 25th. Please note the FBR reference 248789 .

On the 12th of May 2014,  Mr Mansbridge, the Head of Development Services wrote to tell that he was overwriting 248789 and replacing it with 253539. The first complaint was effectively deleted because Mr Mansbridge’ desire to present his version of the lie to the Ombudsman so that he whould not have to revise his letter to the residents of Greens Place and Harbour view nor would he have to write and apologise to Mr Burge.

Sure enough the lie about the shed’s height appeared again in his faux Stage 2 version of our complaint, he was refering to 8296/1A again and even attached a copy:- That must be the plan which the Development Corporation was referring to when it granted planning permission in 1996. The height of the steelwork at River Drive is clearly marked as 12.5m+3m (total 15.5m).

It was clearly not the plan being  referred to in 1996 even the officer who was charged with completeing the phoney Stage 3 report compounded the lie when she said:-

With respect to your comments regarding drawing 8296/14, this drawing was submitted by the developer last year in discharge of condition 4 relating to the fixing details of the end panels. Mr Mansbridge stated in his Stage 2 response that the engineer chose to include a gable elevation of the structure on the same drawing but told you this was not drawn to scale. You have disputed this. I have not considered this point further because it is clear that drawing 8296/14 was submitted in 2013 for a wholly different purpose (i.e. for the purposes of discharging a planning condition) and as such, could never supersede the previously approved plans in terms of defining the dimensions of the approved development.

8296/14 did not supercede the previously approved plans.

Before I was forced to respond to Mr Mansbridge’ false claim about the height of the shed I wrote to to the Chief Executive on the 7th July about the height of it. It was clear that correspondence up to the 13th of February had been viewed  because Michaela Hamilton made no mention with regard to the height of the shed except to repeat the lie that 8296/14 was not to scale:- “Mr Mansbridge stated in his Stage 2 response that the engineer chose to include a gable elevation of
the structure on the same drawing but told you this was not drawn to scale.

The gable end on 8296/14 was drawn to a scale of 1: 100 and with a flat screen and even with a basic  drawing application it was easy to determine from it that the approved height  was 15.6m and width 12.2m. This was the drawing being referred to when Mr Atkinson conceded to our entirely reasonable claim that the shed was 2.7m too tall which explains why Mr Mansbridge overwrote 248789 with 253539 and why it was not presented at a meeting expressly arranged to view it in July the 8th 2014 and why a Senior Panning Officer told the Ombudsman that it was not to scale.

By the end of March 2015, I could see that the Ombudsman had been persuaded to ignore the evidence  to show that UK Dock’ shed on their slipway off River Drive was about 3m taller than planned.

Meanwhile the email that I had sent to the MP for South Shields in March 2015 had wended its way to the MP for Berwick but he was standing down and it was passed to Anne-Marie Trevelyan which resulted in the Council’s Corporate Lead accusing us of making allegations.

It is not an allegation to claim that a structure is taller than planned when it is taller than planned.

I did  try to write a response to Mr Tilbury in early 2016  but decided after the facts were assembled, it made sense to send it straight to the Chief Executive, that rather then send it to the solicitor to forward on to him. I was quite pleased as I had reduced the 12 pages of my first draught to four pages of well reasoned arguments explaining how the planning officer Mr Simmonette had covered up the wrongdoing of the planning and building control officers in late 2013 by giving misinformation to Customer Advocacy linked to the misinformation given to the LGO by an officer before him:-

I ask you (CEO) 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.

Shooting the Messenger for the Second Time

Mr Swales did not want to admit that his staff had lied to the Ombudsman, nor correct the lies either, and Mr Lewis, the second Inspector’s, solution to the problem was to conflate the complaint that the shed was was oversize and the Council had done nothing about it, 10th January 2014, with the complaint that the Council had misled the Ombudsman to hide by repeating “The complainant says the shed is also 3 metres higher than it should be. The Council says it is not. 

The Council’s method of hiding it was to falsely accuse others and I of making allegations about it’s height and that was executed by the Council’s Corporate Lead in  Appendix 6 attached 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.

His option was to instruct someone to misapply ‘Section F’ of a staff code and the Council’s Corporate Lead was the obvious choice for South Tyneside Council’s second attempt to shoot the messenger:-

“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.

Corporate Lead, 1st August 2016.

Like Messrs Cunningham and Atkinson two years before she did not register or record my complaint, theirs being that they failed to register that UK Docks had not built the shed to an approved plan and the Council had done nothing about it and her failure being to register, the one and only complaint, that the Council had misled the Ombudsman.

As there was no audit trail or record of the history of each complaint, each story could be rewritten by those who followed. In the case of the first it meant that in response to our Petition the shed was said to have approval and in the second it meant that the Corporate Lead could repeat herself and she did.

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Two months later, the email sent to Customer Advocacy on 3rd September having been passed back to her, she said:- “After considering your letter, I can again advise that there is no evidence to suggest that there has been deliberate misinformation provided by Council officers to the Local Government Ombudsman.

The email to Customer Advocacy (CA) referred to the copy of the letter sent to Mrs Johnson on the 2nd September 2016 and they should be able to provide a copy but I would prefer one to visit my critique of her handiwork before I address its reappearance under a different guise in April 2021. In the intervening period there were a number of issues:-

1. 2017: 17-Jan: conflation of breach of condition 5, 18-Dec-16 and the earlier breach of condition 2 when the shed was first erected by the Council’s Corporate Lead;

2. 2017, 26-May-17: letter to the Chief Executive about the appalling conduct his Corporate Lead and the planning officer in charge of ST/0461/14/FULwhich remains unanswered;

3. 2017, 8-Aug: letter to Cllr Anglin re ST/0461/14/FUL which CA conflate with the original complaint of 10th January so that it remains unanswered. Laid off to Customer Advocacy who filed it away saying 11-Sep-16:-

4. 2017, 6-Sep: the Council told the MP for South Shields that the LGO found against me and referred me to Mr M Harding the Monitoring Officer;

5. 2018, 2-Feb: list of unanswered emails from CA, re 17-Jan-17 letter;

6. 2018, 19-Sep: complaint to Monitoring Officer about the conduct of Cllr Anglin;

7. 2018, 26-Oct: Further complaint to Monitoring Officer;

8. 2018, 12-Dec: response from a Council solicitor re Cllr Anglin where she repeats much of the misinformation given to the Ombudsman by the Council in 2015, decoded on the 14th;

9. 2019, 9-Apr: letter to Monitoring Officer re response to the complaint about Cllr Anglin. It was never answered because he was presented
with the same choice that was presented to the Planning Manager five
years before;

10. 2019, 1-May: UK Docks claim that they had got permission for their shed, retrospectively;

11. 2019, 7-May: email to Monitoring Officer about UK Docks claim, remains unanswered;

12. 2019, 19-Jun: email/letter to Mr M Harding Head of Legal Services about Gil Hayton’s response in December 2018 and UK Docks claim for their shed:- How much longer will it be before South Tyneside Council will admit that UK Docks have not put in a retrospective planning application for their slipway enclosure? Not five and a half years, I hope.

~ ~ There was no reply and not any ‘out of office’ replies.

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13. 2019, 17-Sep: email to Building Control – laid off to planning
Hi Planning, Please see attached and email below which I believe was
meant for planning
Regards, Debbie Graham Operations &
Partnership Officer

14. 2019, 17-Sep: evasion, back to planning v building control and September 2013

15. 2019, 25-Sep: Cllr Francis advised me that Ms Robason was the new Monitoring Officer;

17. 2019, 5-Dec: email to the Monitoring Officer, Dishonesty at theTown Hall;

18. 2019, 11-Dec: re Dishonesty at the Town Hall I confirm safe receipt and that I will not consider the content of your email and attachments.
– which fits the pattern of responses dictated by CA, 18-Jan-18;

19. 2019, 19-Dec: admission that the Council had not received a retrospective planning application from UK Docks was spoilt by saying:-
The Council has recognised that the development of the shed on the site is unauthorised but concluded some time ago, in accordance with the Constitution, that no enforcement action would be taken as this was not in the public interest as there would be no change in the level of perceived harm suffered. This decision and the reasoning behind it was communicated to residents by the Council.

A repeat of the communication made in 2014 by Mr Mansbridge in his response to our Petition, 2-May 14:- “I have concluded that the development as constructed is acceptable on its planning merits. It would not therefore be expedient for the Council to take enforcement action.

In the same response one will see he also repeated the misrepresentation that the shed had been built to the approved height. Height was never mentioned in the seventh and eight cycles of deceit. Apart from the first cycle of deceit which was about the width, the rest were made to hide the fact that the shed is taller than planned and that was because it was realised that while UK Docks would get permission to lengthen a slightly wider shed there was no chance that they would get permission for a much one taller one.

They were probably advised that there was also no chance that they would permission retrospectively and so they took the risk and started work on it in September 2013 but someone like myself in the planning office who understood plans and drawings, put a stop on the construction for nearly three months and it was only restarted after the meeting in November 2013, organised by Cllr Anglin and the Chair of the Tyne Gateway Assn that work on the shed restarted.

All the measurements and all the available plans, drawings and relevant documents must have been available to the planning officers by mid September 2013 because they had forced UK Docks to stop work on their shed but the Principal Planning Officer had chosen to present an unapproved drawing containing an error in a vital dimension implying that the structure had approval when it had none at a meeting in November.

He had been given a chance when the formal complaint in to Planning Enquiries to make amends in January 2014 but chose otherwise. His fraudulent misrepresentation of the plans was kept alive until UK Docks got permission to lengthen it in February 2016 and it looks like the cover up was continued until December 2019 and by that time the position of Monitoring Officer had passed to Ms Robason and it looks like the same people who were happy to lie to the Ombudsman were more than happy to mislead her as well.

Shooting the Messenger for the Third Time.

Within a few days of of the publication of Shed and Corruption Part 2, which detailed how the Council had corrupted their own complaints procedure, someone had spotted the way things were going and I received a Contact Restrictions Notice on the 29th April 2021, along with a copy of the Complaints Policy 2019v1.5 from Customer Advocacy. Apparently they had relaxed the misuse of Section F on August 18 2018 though Alison’s list fails to mention any correspondence from that date until 2020.

It was another misuse of the rules as Customer Advocacy would have known that there had only been one complaint about South Tyneside Council giving misinformation/misrepresentation to the Local Government Ombudsman.

The first contact restrictions notice or ‘shooting the messenger’ was issued because Mr Swales was caught in a bind because he was asked to produce evidence that the shed had been approved and he could not, we were therefore falsely accused of making allegations about the shed’s height amongst other things and the second was the misuse of Section F of some staff code because he did not want to admit that some of his staff were giving misinformation/misrepresentation to the Local Government Ombudsman.

The third personal attack on me was authorised by whoever was left in charge of South Tyneside Council as Mr Swales had retired and not been replaced. One can only conclude that, that the person left in charge wished to make sure that one of the biggest skeletons in the Council’s cupboard remained there until the post of Chief Executive had been filled.

That skeleton was the enclosure or shed covering the slipway off River Drive, South Shields, and owned by UK Docks and it was there because of the fraudulent misrepresentation made about its height given to the Council by them in September 2013 and the Council repeating it in cycles of deceit until until they had given misinformation/misrepresentation to the Local Government Ombudsman rather accept a request that the shed be removed.

Rebuilding it to the correct height had not been an option since January 2014.

M Dawson,
4th April 2022

Posted in Abuse of Complaints System, Corruption | Leave a comment

Web of Deciet/Broken Promise

Posted on April 1, 2022 by moderator

Introduction

I became aware that South Tyneside Council were manipulating their complaints procedure, which has three stages, when I complained that the planning officer promoting the redevelopment of 71 and 72 Greens Place, South Shields had not followed the guidelines given in SPD9. The Council told the Ombudsman that they had followed the guidelines and my complaint was not upheld.

To put it simply the Ombudsman turned a blind eye to the evidence I presented and Nos 71 and 72 will have to remain permanent reminder to those interested in the level of embedment of corruption in the planning and development offices in the Council and possibly the Local Government Ombudsman.

They are now just a permanent reminder because UK Docks started to build an enclosure over their slipway off River Drive in September 2013 while I was deciding whether to make a complaint about the way in which the Ombudsman had handled my complaint. We had discovered within a few days that the enclosure or shed was 3m taller than the height that had been approved in 1996 but planning officer in charge was addressing his emails:- RE: Approved boat repair shelter at Tyne Slipway, River Drive, South Shields.

Something was amiss but when the 1996 plans were recovered from the archive we were proved right and UK Docks were told to stop work on their shed and they did as soon as the structure was made stable and that left the Council/UK Docks with three decisions to agree:-

1. pull it down and put it in a non residential area;
2. rebuild it to the correct height;
3. put in a retrospective planning application for shed that was
   3m taller, 1m wider and 5.5m longer than the one agreed in 1996.

The slipway off River Drive was ‘owned’ by UK Docks so they had no wish to consider the first option. The second one was not available because it left no room to operate an overhead crane and it would be too short to accommodate the latest ferries and the third was not available because it was unlikely that they would get a longer shed and that would make the business financially unviable.

It appears that the Council at a very senior level had decided to grant them their wish so that they could move their business from Commercial Road to River Drive and that was to maintain the lie that they had approval for the shed. South Tyneside Council had a tried and tested method of doing this and it involves repeating the lie through each cycle or stage of the complaints procedure until reaches the Ombudsman.

If for any reason honesty prevails and the fraud is revealed the Council just overwrite that stage so the fraud is reinstated because they can, they control the complaints procedure, and a bowdlerised version of the complaint is presented to the Ombudsman by the Council giving them misinformation and/or misrepresentation and it looks like the spokesman for the Council, a Senior Planning Officer, simply tells the Ombudsman that the complainant was making allegations, so the Inspector for the Ombudsman can turn a blind eye to the truth and she does.
How else can she say in her third and final draft:-

There is no evidence of fault in the way the Council dealt with the breach of planning control and its decision not to take enforcement action. It kept residents informed throughout the process. The complainant says the shed is also 3 metres higher than it should be. The Council says it is not. There is no fault in how the Council decided the shed is the permitted height.

The Council then use that conclusion to ward off anyone trying to establish the truth behind a scheme such as an MP or the Press they are spun a version of that summary and if one attempts to correct the lie one is accused of making allegations and what started as a Cycles of Deceit had become a Web of Deceit.

Please read on:-

31 March 2022

Dear Nicola,

I have added my email, of the 25th March, to you and Gill Hayton, to that list of attachments because I have decided to copy the latest information to the two MPs who have been involved with the main issue, UK Docks’ Shed, for a number of years (nearly 7 for the MP for Berwick and nearly 5 for the MP for South Shields) – I was lodging in Amble 8-6 years ago and that may explain the MP for Berwick’s involvement two years before the MP for South Shields. Strange because UK Docks have no presence in Amble and definitely no oversize boat shed.

The purpose of my email to Ms Hayton on 26th October 2018 was to make it clear that that the same people giving misinformation and misrepresentation to the Local Government Ombudsman were giving much the same misinformation to the Monitoring Officers, the first being Mike Harding. He never answered any emails and when I complained about the conduct of Councillor Anglin, re the Town Hall meeting, November 2013, in 2018, it was Ms Hayton who was given the task of responding and she did so by repeating some of the fraudulent misrepresentations given to the Ombudsman, the main one being, that the height of the shed had been approved.

With regard to the height of the shed I tell her the Ombudsman said, in paragraph 34 in her Findings, 15-Apr-15:– “I have seen the 1996 plans. On plan 1/B the applicant has written the proposed elevations at the inland end as 12.5 metres plus 3 metres. Mr X says the Council should not have taken the applicant’s word for this.

I go on to explain to Ms Hayton:- “If you have any doubt about what I am saying about the planned height of the shed please take a look at an authorised copy of 8296/2 and on the left hand you will get confirmation that the shed is 2.7m taller than planned ~ the left hand is the landward end!

Her response, 12-Dec-18, was a contradiction:- “Furthermore, the Ombudsman disagreed with your assertions as to the height of the development and whether that was not in accordance with the plans. The Ombudsman found no fault in how the Council determined the permitted height of the landward end of the development was 12.5 metres plus 3 metres.

The permitted height per Shed-Heights.pdf is 12.8m, 8296/2 being the only drawing from 1996 with dimensions and it shows, to put it bluntly, that someone was lying when they told the Ombudsman the approved height of the shed was 15.5m at the inland end and I suggest you ask Mr Simmonette to take a good look at 8296/2 because I told him much the same thing as I told Ms Hayton, three years earlier on the 30th September 2015:-

“Drawing 8296/1A was not authorised by T&WDC and I believe it was because of the misleading dimensions but they did authorise drawing 8296/2. If the gradient (2.656m) is used to give it a scale the dimensions of the elevation are:- 13m road end, 16m river end and length 22m. This gives much weight to the contention that the shed has been built 3m too high.

1

While the dimensions are approximations to the nearest meter, they clearly reflect the truth i.e. the shed is 3m taller than planned and he ducks the issue by not responding and probably because I reinforced the point later in that email letter by asking Mr Simmonette:-

Please examine the drawing 8296/14 yourself and tell me that a) it is not to scale, b ) the height is not about 15.5m (rather than 18.5m) and c) the elevation is not the river end. This drawing shows that taking the gradient into account the planned height of the road end elevation should be about 12.5m, not 15.5m as built.

I think I have demonstrated that the current slipway shed is built 3m higher than any plans provided by South Tyneside. I does not appear to be good planning practice to consider an application to extend a structure when it has been built without planning permission.

Added to the fact that I had earlier referred him to 8296/2, I had given him the choice of repeating those 3 lies or admitting that the shed was in fact nearly 3m taller than permitted and he avoided it by passing the choice to Customer Advocacy and Alison Hoy responded on his behalf on the 9th December 2015:-

Your email of 4th December refers to not being satisfied with the responses to the second part of your earlier contact to the team on 30 September:-

From: mick.dawson at theharbourview.co.uk 
Date: Wed, September 30, 2015 9:09 am 
To: Garry Simmonette, Mick Dawson
Cc: George Mansbridge, Gordon Atkinson 
Subject None 
Title of letter - Amended Planning Application - ST/0461/14/FUL.

All people addressed knew that the the shed was, as I said, nearly 3m taller than planned because they would have seen 8296/2, Messrs Mansbridge and Atkinson had brought 8296/1A and 8296/2 to the meeting of 8th July 2014 instead of 8296/14 and it clearly gives the height of road or landward end of the shed as 12.7m.

You can see Alison continues to try and absolve them:-

This matter has been investigated fully by the Council through its corporate complaints procedure. The complaint was not upheld and was also considered and decided by the Local Government Ombudsman who found no fault with the Council’s decision.
The Local Government Ombudsman’s final decision dated 15 April 2015 was that: This complaint is not upheld. In 2013 a developer resumed building a boat shed for which he had planning permission and had started building in 2001.

Alison went on to say:-

We have also responded to a further enquiry made to the Council via your then local MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan, dated 1 June 2015, which claimed you had not been able to locate any details from the Council on why the shed had been approved despite the breach in planning conditions, even though at that time you had received complaint responses from both the Council and the Ombudsman.

The complaint response from the Council was mainly misinformation or fraudulent misrepresentation much of which was repeated to the Ombudsman. Please see the critism of paragraghs 30-38 of the Ombudsman’s Findings, as that summarised most of what I told the solicitor to whom I took Alison’s email, 9-Dec-15, in January 2016.

I’m not sure that I sent you a copy of his advice but I certainly sent one to Mrs Johnson and Customer Advocacy on the 15th January 2020. Incidentally it was the first item the list that Alison gave Paula Abbot on the 29th April 2021. If they have ‘lost’ their copies, one can be found at in the post:- Advice from solicitor 26-Jan-16.

The solicitor and I had discussed how the Council had maintained the lie that the shed had been built to the approved height for over two years and we reckoned it was because they had not recorded the original complaint so that they could then just repeat the fraudulent misrepresentation, that the dimension 12.5m plus 3m at the landward end had been approved again and again until it got repeated by the Ombudsman.

That was why the solicitor said I must raise a new complaint, advice from Peter Dunn, Solicitors:-

“The new complaint being the misinformation and/or misrepresentation by the Local Authority in supplying information to the Local Government Ombudsman. Hopefully this can be dealt with as a “new” matter. If this complaint is not dealt with by South Tyneside Council, and it may well be that they say it relates to the old complaint, then I believe it justifies going straight to the Local Government Ombudsman.

A new complaint was not raised and it was the second Ombudsman that said it related to the old complaint. Not the original complaint, that went into the bin but the one presented to the first Ombudsman by South Tyneside Council. The first Ombudsman ignored my complaint that the shed was 3m taller than planned completely and based her findings on Mr Mansbridge creation and that was how the UK Docks got their longer shed.

I was looking forward to your response re Conflation when Leah posted to various people on your behalf on 24th December 2020:-

RE:   Conflation of Complaints. Date: 24/12/2020 (11:37:26 AM BST) From: Nicola Robason To:   mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk, Nicola Robason 
Cc:   Emma Lewell-Buck MP, Anne-marie Trevelyan MP, Cllr Angela Hamilton, Cllr David Francis, Peter Cunningham, George Mansbridge, Hayley Johnson, Alison Hoy, Garry Simmonette, Angela Coutts, Mick Dawson

Dear Mr Dawson Thank you for your email regarding complaints you have raised with the Council. I am writing to acknowledge receipt and confirm that this matter will be looked into and you will receive a response week commencing 4th January. Regards Leah

It would appear that whoever was running South Tyneside Council had become aware that once I had started the ‘Shed and Corruption’ series, where what it would lead to and instructed Ms Hoy/Ms Abbott to silence me again and it does mean that Leah’s promise has been broken.

Yours sincerely,
M Dawson

Posted in Abuse of Complaints System, Corruption, Evasion | Leave a comment

Shed and Corruption – Part 12

Posted on March 25, 2022 by moderator 
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk        
Date: 25/03/2022 (03:53:57 PM GMT)
To: Nicola Robason
Cc: Gill Hayton (Solicitor)
Attachments: Cycles of Deceit.pdf and True-Shed-Height.pdf

2 mistakes made by the author, both tiresome but  neither serious.
‘Cycles of Deceit’ got overwritten by Revised Cycles of Deceit and its Repercussions and ‘True-Shed-Heights’ was given a new name, Shed Heights.

25th March 2022

Dear Nicola

On March 3rd I sent a letter, Shooting the Messenger 2015, to Mr Tew explaining how his predecessor had chosen to deny the fact that the shed was nearly 3m taller than the height approved and had chosen instead to falsely accuse the people, who had claimed that it was taller than the plan approved, of making allegations.

I made a mistake in sending it to the parties I thought should be concerned rather than copying them and I hope by the content that it should have been obvious that it was a mistake and that included the agent who, on behalf of the Chief Executive, had accused us of making allegations. I wished to write separately to you as Monitoring Officer as it appears the the same people who were content to lie to the Ombudsman were quite happy to mislead the Monitoring Officer, whom I believe, was originally the Head of Legal Services.

That is the main reason have copied Gill Hayton into ‘Cycles of Deceit and Repercussions’. It looks like she was was Deputy Monitoring Officer in 2018 and then second in command to John Rumney three years later:- 15-May-21:

“I am out of the office returning on 17th May 2021. If you need urgent assistance, please contact Gill Hayton at southtyneside.gov.uk.

I did not need urgent assistance but neither did I expect Mr Rumney get back to me as I had already sent him a copy of Shed and Corruption – Part 4. In it, I explained to Paula Abbott why her misuse of Complaints Policy 2019 v 1.5 on April 29th 2021 was unreasonable and I thought that the Council’s Legal Section should be made aware if its misuse by Customer Advocates. Unreasonable because there was only ever one complaint about a planning officer giving misinformation the Ombudsman.

Soon after I became aware that South Tyneside Council had allowed developers of adjacent properties to close off waterfront footpaths in July 2021, I discovered that the practice had spread to Amble and that Northumberland County Council’s enforcement officer was not prepared to do anything about it either and that then made two issues that I have shared with you:-

1) English Coastal Path

The practice of giving parts of the English Coastal Path to the developers of adjoining properties had spread from South Tyneside to Northumberland and as rights of way etc. are a matter for Parliament and I should be really be pursuing it with one or possibly both the MP’s, or the corrupt practice of giving away public footpaths to developers will spread further. The English Coastal Path had been in existence since 2014 so it is unlikely that the practice was invented by the Planning Office in South Shields but it was the first one of which I became aware.

2) UK Docks, River Drive, South Shields

After UK Docks’ started to assemble their enclosure on the slipway off River Dive in South Shields in September 2013, it was quickly established to be taller than planned because the planning officer who was promoting the development, Mr Cunningham, referred the questioner to the Council’s complaints procedure instead of answering her question: “Has the revised height of 15.5 metres been approved or is it in breach of the 1996 Planning approval?

I said quickly established because his refusal to answer led to people like me, to look more carefully at the drawings he had provided and we realised that the enclosure was taller than planned by the gradient between each end or 2.7m and someone in the Council’s Planning Office must have come to the same conclusion because they forced UK Docks to stop work on it for nearly 3 months. Please see the attached detail, Shed-Height. It takes the sound gable end dimension of the river end from either 8296/1A or 1B to arrive at the true approved height of the shed.

They did not address the complaint that the shed was taller than planned and it was removed from the records so that they need not answer it. Using the drawing approved by the Council’s Planning Manager in October 2013, I eventually got him to concede that it was too tall in February 2014 but that did not suit those who were promoting the myth UK Docks had permission for their shed and it was removed from the records.

That was the second rewrite of the history of events, the first being the removal of the original complaint from the records, and was made by the Head of Development Service introducing a new complaint in cycle 5 on the 2nd June 2014. It appears to have been made to save the Head of Development having to take disciplinary action over his Planning Manager in allowing UK Docks to continue to work on their shed in spite of his admission about the breach of the second condition.

This was done by overwriting original complaint for the second time and changing its job number to 253539 and Mr Mansbridge’ reputation was saved by not presenting the true version of events to the Ombudsman but his ‘new’ version. Mine was ignored and I suggest if that (you) do nothing else about the ‘Cycles of Deceit’ you read the blog:- lgo-paras-30-38

Meanwhile my letter/email to the MP for South Shields landed on the MP for Berwick’s desk just before the election in 2015 and it ended up with Anne-Marie Trevelyan and it appears that she was given the same misinformation and or misrepresentation that was given to the Local Government Ombudsman as I heard no more about it.

I met Emma Lewell-Buck MP, not long before the hustings for the 2017 General Election where we agreed that the Council were being evasive about UK Docks and I would work with her Westoe Road Office (to) try and get some way forward but that failed because Emma was told on 6th September 2017:- The previous issues relating to the boat yard have in fact now been looked at by the Local Government Ombudsman and they found no issue with the yard or anything relating to its development. Unfortunately, the Ombudsman’s decision cannot be re-visited.

This was a year after my exchange with the Council’s Corporate Lead where I had told her that I had consulted a solicitor but it appears that she kept that information to herself and she may disagree but I think it would have interfered with the Chief Executive’s decision to hide the fact that the shed was taller than planned if the staff that worked in Customer Advocacy had known of the solicitor’s advice.

Maybe not, they were still repeating the lies embedded in the Ombudsman’s Findings to an MP in September 2017 and it looks like she needs an apology for being told there was no issue with the yard.

There has been an issue since UK Docks claim that they had approval for their shed was backed by the Principal Planning Officer, Mr Cunningham, who told me, 20-Dec13:- “I have explained during our meeting that the base and height of the structure are compliant…this is the end of the matter as far as I am concerned.

As you can see they (are) not compliant with any approved plans and that was how UK Docks got their longer shed through the back door, a polite way of saying corruptly. I hope you agree.

Kind regards
Michael Dawson.

Posted in Abuse of Complaints System, Corruption, Evasion | 1 Comment

Critique – November 2020

Posted on March 17, 2022 by moderator 
Date: 1 August 2016
Greens Place                  Our Ref: CX/253539
South Shields                 Your Ref: 248789
Tyne and Wear NE33 2AQ

Dear Mr Dawson

Thank you for your letter to Martin Swales, Chief Executive dated 8 July 2016, requesting matters related to your previous complaint to be raised as a new complaint, I manage the process and staff that support customer complaints and compliments. Your letter has therefore been forwarded to me to consider and respond.

Mrs Johnson has changed the reference 248789 to 253539. The latter was raised by the Head of Development Services to overwrite the original complaint of 10-Jan-14 again. I say again because the Planning Manager had already overwritten the original, after the Principal Planning Officer, Mr Cunningham, referred me back to the Tyne Gateway Assn instead of passing it and the responsibility for it to the Enforcement Section.

Having considered the contents of your letter and the final decision by the Local Government Ombudsman, I am now in a position to respond.

My letter was about the Council giving misinformation/misrepresentation to the Ombudsman and to reinforce that point I said: “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.”

There is no evidence to suggest that there has been deliberate misinformation provided by Council officers to the Local Government Ombudsman,

The letter to the Chief Executive had 3 pages of evidence of a Senior Planning Officer giving misinformation to the LGO.

Neither do I have evidence to question the content of the Ombudsman’s investigation. My several years of experience is that an investigator works with a complainant during the investigation to consider the initial complaint and relevant subsequent points raised. It is your responsibility to provide the investigator with information to fully investigate your complaint, it is our responsibility to respond to that investigation.

I gave the investigator a plan that had been approved and explained why it should be considered and plans that had not been approved and said why they should not be considered. I also pointed out that the unauthorised plans could be presented honestly to back the protestors claim that the shed was nearly 3m taller than planned.

I can find no evidence that the Council did not fully comply with the investigator’s questions throughout the process.

No, they sent her the misleading plans first given to the Principal Planning Officer in 2013.

I understand your frustration in what is a complex matter, which has been the subject of extensive investigation by the Council and the Local Government Ombudsman, involving information spanning two decades.

It was not a complex matter. The Council discovered that the shed was taller than planned in 2013 and did nothing about it. Instead they referred us to a corrupted complaints procedure which led to them giving misinformation/misrepresentation to the Ombudsman.

Whilst I know that you remain dissatisfied with the outcome, I consider the Local Government Ombudsman’s decision final and must now draw a close to this matter.

I refer you to an email sent on 9 December 2015 from Alison Hoy, regarding the repeated contacts to the Council concerning issues you had raised in your original complaint regarding the boat repair shed built by UK Docks.

Alison’s email was confirmation that the Council using the Ombudsman to dismiss our complaint so that they could unjustly degrade our complaints to unfounded allegations and repeat that to Council officers, Elected Members, Members of Parliament and Newspapers etc. – 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.

Since the Ombudsman’s final decision on your complaint on 15 April 2015, you have sent further emails/letters to Council officers, Elected Members and Members of Parliament, reiterating aspects of the complaint: – most of what she says is unsubstantiated rubbish, read on:

• 1) Letter to MP Trevelyan dated 1 June 2015 advising her of your complaint, but not advising the MP it had been Investigated by the Council and Local Government Ombudsman. No – I was advising her that the shed was 3m too tall and I asked the CEO to provide evidence to the contrary. Mrs Johnson was not able to do this so she chose to malign the good citizens of South Shields instead. Complaints that the shed was taller than planned are not allegations when the shed is taller than planned.

• 2) Email 4 December 2015 to Gary Simmonette and the Planning Team cc’d to Dave and Julie Routledge; Emma Lewell-Buck MP; George Mansbridge; Melanie Todd; Cllr Audrey McMillan; Cllr John Wood; Cllr John Anglin, referencing the original boat shed dimensions, which had been addressed through the complaints procedure, alongside your objections to a new planning application. No – I was just pointing out that it was wrong to extend the shed when it had been built without planning permission. It was built 3m taller and a meter wider than the approved plans allow.

• 3) Email 1 February 2016 regarding the February committee meeting, making reference to misinformation and/or misrepresentation by the Council in supplying information to the Local Government Ombudsman. No – the email of the 1st February was from Mr Mansbridge and confirmation that the Council had given UK Docks permission to extend the shed which was built without planning permission, confirming that he had not passed my observation that the existing shed had not been built without planning permission.

• 4) Letter 8 July 2016 to the Chief Executive and the Ombudsman. No – there was no letter to the Ombudsman, the letter was to the Chief Executive, it was the one and only letter about the Council giving misinformation to the Ombudsman. I so happens I chose to use UK Docks as an example because I hold records of nearly all the written correspondence. Most of them denials or evasions about the variation from plan.

I enclose a copy of our policy on dealing with unreasonable and persistent complainants. In my view, your behaviour is a disproportionate use of resources and unreasonable because you have:

• 5) submitted repeated complaints, essentially regarding the same issue, after our complaints process has been exhausted, No – Sunday working excluded there were only two complaints about the shed:

  1. 10-Jan-14, that the shed was taller and wider than permitted and nothing had been done about it. It was over written by the Planning Manager 14-Jan-14, 248789 and again after a complaint about the conduct of his planning staff (staff are not sheds!) by the Head of Development Services – 253539.
    i) the Planning Principal Officer referred me back (back pass) to a meeting where he had produced drawings with errors on to back a false claim that the shed had been approved. He did not answer the question that;. if the shed was taller and wider than permitted why had nothing had been done about it:
    ii) the Planning Manager gave out bits of misinformation re the drawings and tried to pass me forward to the next stage (forward pass) without answering my question; if the shed was taller and wider than permitted and nothing had been done about it.
  2. 8-Jul-16, that the Council had misled the Ombudsman about the shed.

• 6) attempted to have the complaint reconsidered in ways that are incompatible with our adopted complaints procedure, or with good practice, No – incompatible with a corrupt complaints procedure but compatible with good practice. Please see the guide to the Council’s Complaints Procedure.

• 7) adopted a ‘scattergun’ approach: pursuing a complaint or complaints with the authority and, at the same time, with a Member of Parliament/a councillor/independent auditor/the Standards Board/local police/solicitors, while an appropriate avenue is available via the Local Government Ombudsman, No – I not written to the local Police or the Board which She was implying. If I think that the Council is acting improperly on any issue I believe I am entitled to write to my MP- it is up to the MP whether he or she takes up my case. I wrote to my ward Councillors because they, apart from the Chairman of the Planning Committee(Cllr Wood), attended the meeting where we were told the shed was ‘legal’. Was she suggesting that the Councillors should not be told that they were misinformed by a Principal Planning Officer of the Council? I included members of the Residents Group Committee as well because I had to relay the ‘facts’ to a meeting with them a few hours after the same meeting where we were told the shed was ‘legal’. I did not believe what I had been told by the Officer and it took me 2 months and numerous emails to prove that shed was not approved. Was she suggesting that members of the Residents Group should remain ignorant of the fact that the shed was built without planning permission?

• 8) refused to accept the decision of the Council or Local Government Ombudsman, by arguing points of detail. No – the Council have based their decisions on drawings provided by UK Docks, These were not authorised and one of them was incomplete because there were vital details missing. I based my arguments on documents provided by their Agents in pursuance of ST/1146/13/COND which had been approved.

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 communication.

We will however, ensure that any separate complaints you raise, including any that may arise from a new planning application, are dealt with appropriately and that you receive a response where necessary.

She does not deal with it because if you say, for example, that the shed is 3m taller she calls it a complaint and as she and all those since 2013 have not properly dealt with the original complaint that the shed is both wider and taller than permitted and the Council have done nothing about it nor has she dealt properly with the complaint that the Council gave misinformation/misrepresentation to the Ombudsman. MD 17/11/20

Yours sincerely
Hayley Johnson

Corporate Lead Strategy and Performance

Posted in Abuse of Complaints System, Corruption, Evasion | 1 Comment

Palmer and Co

Posted on March 6, 2022 by moderator

When I talked with Mr Palmer on the afternoon of the 13th January,  I assumed that I was talking with new manager of the MP’s Office in South Shields because the phone number given was that of the MP’s Office. I discovered that he was not the new Manager when  Mr Buck responded to emails to the MP the next day.

I felt I was let down when I realised Mr Buck had not responded to the email to the MP of the evening before when I asked of her:-  “What I really needed from you was your support and Mr Palmer has indicated by our exchange over the phone that he is not prepared to give it. At the end of the day the Council are misusing the Ombudsman’s Office to hide malpractice then use their findings to deflect any enquirers after the truth“.

I was also disappointed to discover that Mr Buck had not questioned Mr Palmer on his views which were so obviously at sorts the those of the MP, myself and the local residents, but worse, I was bit more than concerned that between the pair of them they had changed the context of the complaint:*

  • from misusing the services of the Ombudsman;
  • to the implied suggestion that an MP should try to  influence the Ombudsman’s decision .

By the time Mr Buck got to Mr Palmer’s suggestion that, “a possible course of action may be to complain further to the Local Government Ombudsman.” I was getting a little annoyed because the Council misrepresent the facts to the Ombudsman so that any complaint is not upheld or dismissed and UK Docks is a good example.

By the time I got to Mr Palmer’s suggestion that, ‘he took legal advice’, my mood had changed to one of contempt which was not good for a number of reasons. One of them being that the obvious is often over-looked:

  1. Mr Palmer had been copied the letter from Peter Dunn and Co but Mr Buck had not.
  2. I did not copy the case notes, ZA4803 to Mr Buck because it was would be a reasonable assumption the he would be aware that I (mick.dawson@theharbour.view) had been freely communicating with Emma Lewell-Buck for some years.
  3. Instead of the defensive response, I should have ridiculed Mr Palmer’s suggestion that I complain to the Ombudsman and seek legal advice.**

*1 The complaint raised in January 2014 was changed from, UK Dock’s shed had not been built to the approved plan and no enforcement action taken, to one of: whether there was any material divergence from plan or not?

*2 The observation pre phone call, was changed from, South Tyneside Council were misleading the Ombudsman to hide the fact that their complaints procedure was being misused, post phone call to one of: whether an MP has influence over the Ombudsman or not?

The difference between 1 and 2 is that there the divergences from plan are material but the Council deny it but there is no argument at all with Mr Buck’s saying that “Mr Palmer correctly informed you that MPs have no influence over the Local Government Ombudsman”.

I was not saying that MPs should try and influence the Ombudsman, I was suggesting that MP’s make it a criminal offence for individuals to lie the Ombudsman which is completely different.

** I wrote and thanked Mr Buck on the 24th January for removing the blocks on my informing the MP of what happening in her office but it appears that Mr Palmer must have taken exception to the suggestion, “I think we can make a case for her and Angela seeing the Chief Executive and putting him on the spot as they did UK Docks in March last year but we can only do that by working together. Not only did UK Docks shoot themselves in the foot over say they had planning permission, they blasted a hole through the Town Hall’s claim that the shed had been approved.“

Posted in Abuse of Complaints System, Corruption, Denial, Misconduct | Leave a comment

Shed and Corruption – Part 11: Shooting the Messenger in 2015

Posted on March 4, 2022 by moderator

The neighbours of UK Docks’ slipway shed off River Drive complained about its height in September 2013 and after the Council’s Planning Manager conceded that it was too tall, some five months later, we asked for it to be removed but instead of it being removed the Council removed the admission that it was taller than permitted from the records.
How this was done was described in a letter to the Chief Executive, 3-Mar-22:  Shooting the Messenger in 2015 which was an attachment, SandC-Part11.pdf, to a covering email separating not unrelated issues.

Date: 03/03/2022 (15:14:43 GMT)
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
To: Jonathan Tew, Hayley Johnson, George Mansbridge, Helen Dalby,
Emma Lewell-Buck MP, Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP
Attachment: SandC-Part11.pdf (262 KB)

There were two issues, the first being the English Coastal Path which should really be a matter for Parliament and something needs to be done about that quite quickly for the corrupt practice of giving away public footpaths to the developers of sites overlooking them has spread from South Tyneside to Northumberland County Council.

The second is the height of UK Docks’ Shed which I described as a first cycle of deceit to a former neighbour, I was forgetting the first cycle of deceit was the complaint about 71 Greens Place, called Double Standards in August 2021.

I had originally mentioned Cycles of Deceit in a post of February 2020 when I was planning the Shed and Corruption series and thought it might be Part 4 before mentioning it again, the first 2 being the time before Customer Advocacy’s email of the 9th December 2015, 3 being Sunday Working, 4 being up to the email to Cllr Hamilton on the 23rd December 2019 and Part 5 about the false accusation that the MP for South Shield and I were colluding to influence the Local Government Ombudsman’s decisions.

I was also overlooking something that should have been obvious from the beginning, and that was that the second cycle of deceit began with the Principal Planning Officer referring me back to the Town hall meeting because he did not want admit that the shed was taller than permitted and it ended with the accusation that we were making allegations by the Council’s Corporate Lead because she needed to hide the fact that we were correct when we complained that the shed was not only taller than planned, it had been used to cover what was to become a ship repair yard.

After I had hauled the complaint that the shed was too tall back on course, the Planning Manager had the simple  choice of backing his Principal Planning Officer or the protestors, of which I was only one of many, and he chose to back Mr Cunningham presumably to save himself the trouble of taking disciplinary action against his offending planning officer.

His offence was to claim that the shed had approval when the approved plans indicated that not only was the shed wider than planned it was materially taller as well.

My letter to Mr Tew, Chief Executive, of March 3rd, began:- “I have laid out the timeline which I shared with my neighbours in Greens Place and your office from September 2013 but before we retrace our steps through the Council Complaints Procedure, I suggest you determine, by the examination of the approved drawing 8296/2, what the planned height of UK Docks’ shed should be.

In the letter, Shooting the Messenger 2015, I first ask Mr Tew to look at the only approved drawing from 1996 with dimensions and that was because it gave the landward end as 12.7m and then I described how the complaint about the shed being too big and how, in its passage through the complaints system, it was sent round and round in numerous cycles of deceit where every time I point out a material deviation from plan, it is challanged. Finally it was denied by reference to an unauthorised drawing that contains a major mistake to the Ombudsman.

In the first stage, it was passed back to someone who was happy to declare the shed ‘legal’, the first cycle of deceit, and in the second, third and fourth stages, they repeated the lie that the shed had been built to the approved height each one being a cycle of deceit and so on:-

Undesignated complaint
1 Mr Cunningham Compliant with plans that were not approved i.e. ones in error that gave the Landward End as 15.5m.
2 Mr G Atkinson Approved Height Landward End = 15.5m

Complaint ID: 248789
3 Mr G Mansbridge Approved Height Landward End = 15.5m

Complaint ID: 253539 – & – Mansbridge Trap
4 Mr G Mansbridge Approved Height Landward End = 15.5m
5 Ms M Hamilton No mention of the height at all.
6 LGO – 1st Draft No mention of the height at all.
7
8		 LGO – 2nd Draft The complainant says the shed is also 3 metres higher than it should be. The Council says it is not. There is no fault in how the Council decided the shed is the permitted height. Second draft reference.

Letter to Emma Lewell-Buck, MP diverted to the MP for Berwick.
8 LGO – 3rd Draft The complainant says the shed is also 3 metres higher than it should be. The Council says it is not. There is no fault in how the Council decided the shed is the permitted height. Final draft reference.
9 LGO
2nd Inspector		 I consider that your latest complaint remains that of your previous complaint which has already been determined and the opportunity to request a review of that decision has passed.

In the fifth and sixth stages they failed to mention the height at all and in the seventh and eighth they just repeated the denial given to them by a Senior Panning Officer as I explained to the 1st Ombudsman in great detail in Lexplanation1A.pdf.

In the ninth, the complaint that they had given misinformation to the Ombudsman was conflated with the original complaint to avoid the denial made by his predecessor and that takes us back to the very beginning.

The letter to the MP for South Shields, ended up with the MP for Northumberland and she asked the Chief Executive:- “Mr Dawson has not been able to locate any detail from the Council as to why the structure was approved despite the breach in planning conditions, and has been attempting to do so for nearly a year.

When the structure was approved by the building inspector,  he hid the fact that it was nearly 3 m too tall, then the Chief Executive asked his Corporate Lead to accuse me and the other residents, of making allegations so that he did not have to admit to the cycle of deceits perpetrated by his staff:- “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.

It was because of that exchange in mid 2015 that I called the retelling of this cycle of events from 2013 to the new Chief Executive, Mr Tew:- ‘Shooting the Messenger’

Denials and conflations are the main methods used to corrupt a complaints procedure but no less important are the other items in the table first publicised in Shed and Corruption – Part 2:-

Evasion is supported variously by:
[1] Complaint or questions not recorded
[2] Back-pass
[3] Unfounded contradiction (a denial)
[4] Conflation
[5] Diversion into a dead end (forward pass)

It would appear that complaints raised by the other local residents and I were not well documented and UK Docks provides many examples of each method of evasion. Please see page 4 of ‘Burying the Truth’.

I finish Shooting the Messenger 2015 with the observation that by the time I find out that we have been falsely accused of making allegations the date for making making any observations about ST/0461/14/FUL had closed and one can blame the Council’s Corporate Lead for that. Her parting shot in attachment 6 of her letter to Anne-Marie Trevelyan of the 25th June 2015 was to say:-

I hope that this information is useful. Please do not hesitate to share this letter with your constituent.

The letter was not shared and I do not know else was said. My request to know what was said in the main letter and the other attachments was ignored and it is not unreasonable to come to the conclusion it was not much different from what a Senior Planning Officer told the Ombudsman.

While I knew that the Council were using the Ombudsman to hide malpractice in their planning and building control sections, it was not until I received an email from Alison Hoy on the 9th December 2015, on behalf of Customer Advocates Customer that I get confirmation that they were doing this, 2nd paragraph:-

This matter has been investigated fully by the Council through its corporate complaints procedure. The complaint was not upheld and was also considered and decided by the Local Government Ombudsman who found no fault with the Council’s decision.

I also get confirmation that there is another reason in paragraph 5:-

We have also responded to a further enquiry made to the Council via your then local MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan, dated 1 June 2015, which claimed you had not been able to locate any details from the Council on why the shed had been approved despite the breach in planning conditions, even though at that time you had received complaint responses from both the Council and the Ombudsman.

It was to fend off enquiries from people like MPs and Journalists and I took a copy of this email to a solicitor for advice and he said that it would be best to raise a complaint about the Council giving misinformation to the Ombudsman. That was in January 2016 and it was not until July that I made the decision to raise the complaint with the Chief Executive about it.

It was no good pursuing it with Messrs Mansbridge and Co as they had failed to let the Committee who approved ST/0461/14/FUL, know that the existing shed was taller than planned. The company that I have associated with Mr Mansbridge included Mr Simmonette by the time of Alison’s email of the 9th December. It was he who forwarded the emails mentioned in the first two paragraphs of that email:-

I have been forwarded your emails to the Planning Team dated 4th and 7th December 2015, in order to clarify the Council’s position regarding your comments on issues relating to the existing boat repair shed at UK Docks Tyne Slipway and your earlier complaint to the Council regarding this matter.
Your email of 4th December refers to not being satisfied with the responses to the second part of your earlier contact to the team on 30 September. This was regarding the planning enforcement aspect of the existing boat repair shed.

This was one of the best examples of a forward pass into a dead end, item [5] on the list and compares with the Planning Manager getting shot of 248789 to Mr Mansbridge in April 2014.

The email to Mr Simmonette on the 30th September was the first time in which, the approved plan 8296/2 was directly referred, and you can see why Mr Simmonette asked Alison to make sure it ended up unanswered. It was about a lot more than the lack of enforcement and you can see why I the first thing I asked Mr Tew to look at 8296/2 before he did anything else.

8296/2 was indirectly referred to, in the request that the Council request that UK Docks either rebuild their shed to the correct size or remove it, made on March 4th 2014. Mr Mansbridge ensured that went into the bin when he re-badged 248789 as 253539 in May 2014.

I finish Shed and Corruption Part 11 with:-

It would appear that the Council’s Corporate Lead was the most important in a line of people starting with Cllr Anglin, Mr Haig and Mr Watson in getting UK Docks their longer shed and I can only assume that she was chosen to take a shot at me again when I told the Chief Executive that his staff were giving misinformation to the Ombudsman because she did such a good job in persuading the MP for Berwick that we were making allegations.

The ground covered in Part 11 ended over six years ago when the Corporate Lead told the MP for Berwick:- “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 lengthy period in time began eight and a half years ago with Mr Cunningham referring my neighbour to a complaints procedure instead of answering the question was the planned height of the shed 12m or 15.5m and I finish with the covering email with:- “The Council have adopted even more underhand methods since the end of 2015 to hide the misdemeanours of various staff and I hope to give you the details of how it was done, before too long.

 

Posted in Abuse of Complaints System, Corruption, South Tyneside Council | 2 Comments

Scaled or Not?

Posted on March 3, 2022 by moderator

Approved Drawing 8296/4.

A copy is held on theharbourview.co.uk as D8296_4.pdf

Is is best to view on a laptop or big tablet as the scale can be adjusted to represent an A4 page at 1:1 (make the width on the screen = 21cm).

At that scale the height at the halfway point becomes 5.2cm and the length 7cm.

There is no argument about the length of it which is 22m (between centres not overall, especially when the cladding is added).

The ratio of the real to the size on screen of the length is therefore 22/0.07= 314.3.

From the figures given by the Council in January 2013 the height of the middle frame is 15.5m + half the gradient between each end (2.7m) = 16.85m.

The drawing is not to scale as the height of the middle frame, represented by the size on the screen is = 314.3×0.052m or 16.34m making it 0.5m different from the figure calculated from the heights given by the Council. A centimetre difference one could reasonably claim that the drawing was to scale but half a meter, never.
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Disappearing Footpaths

Posted on February 8, 2022 by moderator

When Garlands applied to South Tyneside Council for permission to build their Call Center they anticipated a workforce of about 800 and permission was granted for two office buildings and a large overspill car park:-

Garlands is delighted to announce a major business expansion, with the creation of a new contact centre in South Shields, South Tyneside in North East England. The centre will comprise two new office buildings totalling 47000 sq. ft. within a two acre site. Construction of the new eight hundred seat centre will be carried out by Mandale Commercial Ltd. and work will start immediately. The centre is expected to open in February 2008. Over a thousand people could eventually work at the site.

Garlands went into administration in May 2010 and the Centre was shut down before they even put the second office in to use.

The site appeared to have been cursed because UtilityWise used the main office building for a while but they too went into administration in 2014. The car park only ever had an occasional visitor for many years and then the bricks that were laid to make it started to disappear.
When the ‘Call Center’ was converted into housing it was all fenced off in what appeared to have been a land grab by the developer while he carried out the conversion.

Continued in English Coastal Path

Posted in Abuse of Complaints System, Corruption, South Tyneside Council | Leave a comment

Evasions

Posted on January 25, 2022 by moderator

Methods employed by South Tyneside Council in evading an observation or complaint and in the example used the slipway company, had flouted one of the conditions of the original grant – that it be built to an approved set of plans

[1] Denial or unfounded contradiction, made in response;
[2] Complaint not recorded, nor questions answered;
[3] Conflation of complaints;
[4] Backward Pass to a body already in denial;
[5] Forward Pass or diversion into a dead end

This is a rationalisation of the table that began as a postscript to a letter to a Green Councillor in April 2021. The order in the earlier table reflected the date of occurrence, rather than their significance:- [1] Complaint or questions not recorded, [2] Back-pass, [3] Unfounded contradiction, [4] Conflation and [5] Diversion into a dead end.

That letter began with the introduction: While attempting to tidy the website it soon became clear that the timeline on which it was built was sound. It was based on the complaints raised by many, including Melanie and myself, that the enclosure (shed) on UK Docks’ slipway off River Drive, was to not built to the approved plans. It was taller by some 3m. The facts behind the letter to Melanie remain the same as do the conclusions one can draw from it and it beggars the question: why did the Council persistently lie about the height of the shed?

The Timeline was not only shared between Melanie and I but with many in the Council and the MP for South Shields, for instance. I was busy creating Part 3 when I received a message from the Council, less than thee weeks later, that they were going to ‘Shoot the Messenger’.

It was done because if the questions raised had been answered honestly it would have laid bare the corruption endemic throughout South Tyneside Council which was that the council were giving misinformation to the Ombudsman:-

I ask you (the Chief Executive) 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.
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Posted in Abuse of Complaints System, Corruption, South Tyneside Council | Leave a comment