Harbour View

This first appeared in January 2021 as Retrospective Planning Fears and was published in June with a new title.  It was originally written because the promise of a response to my letter of the 24-Dec-20 never materialised:- Dear Nicola, My email started to grow like Topsy when I started to look back at the number of times that my questions/complaints about the height of the shed were referred to Customer Advocacy and especially how many times the responses were accompanied by misrepresentations of various kinds.

Retrospective Planning Fears
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: 27/01/2021 (17:59:57 BST)
To: Nicola Robason
Cc: Melanie Todd, Alison Hoy, Hayley Johnson, Gill Hayton (Solicitor)

2 Attachments:  toNR27-Jan-21.pdf (77 KB)
                toHLS09apr19s.pdf (40 KB)

Dear Nicola,

An email of a couple of thousand words is unmanageable for an email and what I have to say about retrospective planning of rather the lack of it takes a bit more than that so it has been converted to a letter in pdf format so that it is easier to share.

Nos 71 and 72 Greens place made me aware that South Tyneside Council were misusing the Local Government Ombudsman to cover for bad planning decisions and other misdemeanours but I was not sure how it was being done. The simplest device is to fail to register the complaint at all so there is no record of it to refer back to, the result being that you have to start again through each stage until you get to the Ombudsman and where you are contradicted so the case is not upheld and I hope have explained that in the attached letter ‘An Aversion to Retrospective Planning’.

To do this, misinformation has to be passed from stage to stage and a good example has been attached to illustrate this, toNR27-Jan-21.pdf. In the other letter, ‘Councillor Anglin, UK Docks and the Enclosure on River Drive’ the misinformation appears to have been mainlined to a Council Solicitor.

We do not know what UK Docks told their Agents, Maughan Reynolds Partnership Ltd but the second condition was not included in the Discharge of Conditions as that would have to be considered as request for retrospective planning and for that the Agents would have given the Council the approved plans for consideration and it looks like UK Docks had been advised that there was no chance of that getting passed so a scheme was devised to bypass any path that would lead to a retrospective look at the plans.

As I have raised some legal issues, please pass the copies of both attachments to the acting Head of Legal Services, there appears to be a strange filter to his incoming mail, and I think he should be appraised of the events of 2013-2016.

Kind regards

Michael Dawson

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Attached Letter~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Nicola,

An Aversion to Retrospective Planning

I have been involved in three cases with the Planning Department of South Tyneside Council where the developer built what he wished to build rather than what was permitted i.e. that which had been approved by the relevant planning authority. All cases are examples of the lack of building control and involved the same building inspector and all should have been considered retrospectively but were not.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ rejection ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: mailer-daemon@secureserver.net
Date: 25/12/2020 (12:49:26 PM GMT)
To: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
Delivery to the following recipients failed permanently:

* john.rumney@southtynside.gov.uk

Reason: There was an error while attempting to deliver your message
with [Subject: "Re: Conflation of Complaints."] to john.rumney at
southtynside.gov.uk.
It has been in queue too long, and will not attempt delivery again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ acknowledgement ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Re: Conflation of Complaints.
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: 24/12/2020 (12:07:14 PM GMT)
To: Nicola Robason
Cc: John Rumney

Attachment: Conflation-23-Dec-20.pdf (505 KB)

Dear Leah,

Thank you for responding on Nicola's behalf.
On reading back through the email this morning I realised that I
should have asked Nicola to pass a copy of it to John Rumney as
there are some serious legal points to be gone over before Nicola
even considers her response. 

A blocking application appears to monitoring his incoming mails.

Please excuse me for attaching it again and copying it Mr Rumney. 
I will check to see if the application to block emails is still live.

Kind regards
Michael Dawson

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ response ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RE: Conflation of Complaints.
Date: 24/12/2020 (11:37:26 AM GMT)
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

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

Conflation of Complaints.
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: 23/12/2020 (03:47:11 PM GMT)
To: 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

1 Attachment:  Conflation-23-Dec-20.pdf (505 KB)

Dear Nicola,

My email started to grow like Topsy when I started to look back at the number of times that my questions/complaints about the height of the shed were referred to Customer Advocacy and especially how many times the responses were accompanied by misrepresentations of various kinds.

I’d also started to reproduce quotes and photographs from the various items of correspondence to reduce the number of cross references so I’ve converted ‘Conflation of Complaints’ into a pdf document.

Please see the attached file.

Kind regards,
Mick Dawson

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ letter ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Nicola,

Conflation of Complaints

When we first complained about the height of the enclosure (shed) on the slipway off River Drive, September 2013, we were simply told it had been approved. The Principal Planning Officer was quite helpful and provided us with drawings and a few documents from the archive and even said that we could visit the Town Hall and search through about 250 files that had been recovered (saved to a disc) to check things for ourselves.
And the more we checked, the more we discovered that it was simply not true but unfortunately we were not able to copy any of the files, such as the protest letters from 2001, sent in when Tyne Slipway & Engineering Co Ltd, the previous owners, set the foundations for a shed 13.1m wide x 27.5m long (permission had been granted for one of 12.2m x 22m). It looks like retrospective planning was not considered at that time, mainly because the building inspector did not report this variation from plan. They say it was not his job and I find that difficult to believe but it remains that Tyne Slipway kept quiet about their plans for the longer shed. They may have been happy with this state of affairs but it presented UK Docks with a problem when they needed a taller shed to meet their slipway requirements in 2013.

We were never told when UK Docks took control of Tyne Slipway & Engineering Co Ltd but they were clearly in control when the frames went up in September 2013 but only conditions 3 and 4 appeared on ST/1146/13/COND when it was approved by the Planning Manager on the 14th October..
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Covering Email to Helen Dalby:  20-May-21

Attachment: PDF copy of S and C – Part 5 (The Boat Shed)
and, PDF copy of letter from South Tyneside Council, 29-Apr-21.

Dear Rachel

20th May 2021

If South Tyneside Council do not wish to answer a complaint they simply ignore it and they have various methods or devices to do this. I will use the case of UK Docks’ boat shed as an example.

Neighbours think ‘boat shed’ is a bit of a misnomer and it has been lengthened at the inland end by 25% since the picture was taken in 2015. The end you can see has a height of 18.2m but the plans say it should only be 15.5m and if the Council had not ignored our complaint that it was 2.7m taller than permitted it is unlikely to be been put to use or finished.
When UK Docks applied to have it lengthened the Planning Committee were not told that the other end of the shed was 17% taller than permitted and in February 2016 they got permission to extend it. They were aided in this underhand scheme by the Council accusing the protestors of making unfounded allegations:-

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.

Corporate Lead to the MP for Berwick – 25th June 2015

One only had to look at any approved plans to see that what the residents was saying was true and the Corporate Lead was the one making allegations. A year later, when I pointed out to the Council that the Ombudsman had been misinformed by one of their Senior Planning Officers, I was told that there was no evidence to support this point of view.

I had asked the Ombudsman to look an approved drawing but she chose to use the some plans provided by the Council that contained errors and had not been approved. She found for the Council, presumably because the Senior Planning Officer had told her the drawings to which he referred had been approved and one need look no further than the dates on those drawings to see the fundamental flaw in his argument. The drawings appear to have been made after approval had been given by the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation.

It appears from here that he had also been leaning on the Ombudsman by repeating the Council’s opinion, that complaints about the shed being too tall, were allegations. There is some evidence of this because when a second ombudsman was asked to review their findings in 2017 he said:-

I consider that your latest complaint remains that of your previous complaint which hasalready been determined and the opportunity to request a review of that decision has passed.

Paul Lewis, Investigator, 17th May 2017

In the first part of his statement, he had conflated the complaint to the Ombudsman made in 2015,that the Council were giving misinformation/misrepresentation to the Ombudsman, with the complaint made in 2014:- As the applicant has not discharged condition 2 why is there no retrospective planning application?

The second part should concern those who wish to see that the services like the Local Government Ombudsman are not misused by corrupt Councils to hide misdeeds by their planning and building control staff. Mr Lewis was being complicit with them when he said it was too late to request a review. The approved plans from 1996 survived and they show that the shed was nearly 3m taller than permitted.
In the interval between the First and Second Ombudsman’s findings UK Docks had successfully applied for permission to extend their shed permission to build it was granted on 1st February 2016 and one may curious to know how it came about. The answer was very simple, UK Docks employed another Agent, Gary Craig Associates and both failed mention that their plans to extend the shed included special footings, laid in 2001, and it appears the plans submitted to the planning office in late 2015 for extending the shed were little better than ‘fag packet sketches’.

What was more telling was the threat of suppression of all discussion by the Council on the 1st August 2016:-

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 . . . .
There is no evidence to suggest that there has been deliberate misinformation provided by Council officers to the Local Government Ombudsman, Neither do I have evidence to question the content of the Ombudsman’s investigation. . . .(you) refused to accept the decision of the Council or Local Government Ombudsman, by arguing points of detail. . . .
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.

Hayley Johnson, Corporate Lead

What I had said to the Chief Executive was: “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 staffshould misrepresent the facts to the LGO is for you to determine. That they have misinformed theLGO should be admitted and corrected and that is what this letter is about”

I finished by asking: “I have been advised you may well say that all this relates to an old complaint and so I will ask you for a “new” complaint based on this letter and if you will not deal with it then the Local Government Ombudsman can deal with it” and it appears to have been good advice from the solicitor. He had spotted that the Council were conflating complaints so that the second can beignored.

The first was summarised in 2014 when I asked why were there no retrospective plans submitted when the shed was found to be wider and taller than planned and the second was that the Ombudsman had been misled by a Senior Planning Officer when he said the shed was no taller than the approved plans allow. The clear contradiction was that the authorised plans from 1996 saythe shed should not be taller than 12.7m but the shed is actually 15.5m at that point.

Both the Ombudsman and the Council abuse their complaints procedure by conflating different complaints and the method enabling this is not to register a complaint.
While the Ombudsman is probably not failing to register a complaint that they have been asked to investigate, it appears that they are acting in a like manner as South Tyneside Council when it comes to unjust decisions made by their Inspectors. The main indicator of this happening are in the responses of the Corporate Lead and the Second Inspector which both involve a denial that there was anything out of order followed by a closure:-

There is no evidence to suggest that there has been deliberate misinformation provided by Council officers to the Local Government Ombudsman;
I now consider this matter closed.

Corporate Lead,  August 2016.

Followed ten months later by:

I consider that your latest complaint remains that of your previous complaint which has already been determined; the opportunity to request a review of that decision has passed.

2nd Inspector, May 2017.

Two of those ten months were used up by pointing out the shortcomings of the Corporate Lead’s desire to misapply a Section F (persistent and unreasonable complainants) of an unspecified code but they were passed back to her so they disappeared without trace and thus the cycle of deceit could be repeated at will and it was. It was repeated by the Ombudsman’s second inspector when he conflated the complaint was taller than permitted and the Council had done nothing about it with the complaint that the Council had given misinformation/misrepresentation to the Ombudsman.

Corporate Lead was forgetting one thing: there was only one letter to the Chief Executive about his staff misinforming the Ombudsman and it is entirely reasonable so say that the shed is nearly 3m taller than permitted when it is taller than permitted.

The Second Inspector overlooked the fact that his predecessor chosen to use the misinformation provided by Council so that she could say: 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.

At the end of April 2021, I received a copy of what appears to be a rewrite of Section F, and I was asked take notice of Section 7:

This policy sets out our approach to managing those customers whose actions or behaviour are considered unacceptable, unreasonable or unreasonably persistent and are either having a harmful impact on our staff or their ability to provide an excellent service to other customers.

What is upsetting is that the Council have defined unacceptable behaviour as: “Aggressive, abusive or offensive language or behavior” with the implication that I have been using offensive language or behaving aggressively and they may have had a case had they produced an example.

All they have done is to reproduce a list of unanswered correspondence with the Office of the MP for South Shields and the Council since January 2020. As you can see from Paula Abbott’s email, which I have attached, there will be another year gone before we get any answer to the question the shed’s height.

Yours sincerely,
Michael Dawson

Covering Email, 21-June-21:
Shed and Corruption - Part 4
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: 21/06/2021 (09:27:37 GMT)
To: Paula Abbott
Cc: Peter Cunningham,George Mansbridge, Alison Hoy, Emma Lewell-Buck MP,
Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP, Helen Dalby, Planning Enquiries, John Rumney
Attachment: Shed and Corruption - Part 4

Dear Ms Abbott,
It would appear that you have not been told that the Council’s Corporate Lead had already misused a Section F of an earlier code to malign me nor of her earlier implication/accusation that it was the good folk of South Shields who were lying about UK Docks shed when all along it was the Council who were giving out misinformation about the height of the shed.
You will notice that I have not addressed anything said since Ms Hoy’s supposed letter to me of 28 August 2018 and this is deliberate because I wanted to concentrate on refuting your accusation that that I have been an unreasonable and persistent complainant – please see the attached letter ‘Killing the Messenger’.
That you have been asked to repeat the strategy employed by the Chief Executive’s appointment of the Council’s Corporate Lead five years ago speaks volumes and I hope I have made the point perfectly clear that when she told the MP for Berwick in July 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” – that she was being extremely economical with the truth.

It would appear by your inclusion of the ‘Press’ at the end of your false claim about my conduct:

• Adopting 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/the Local Government Ombudsman/the press

that they have been seeking the truth about the shed and who ever has been talking to them has skirted around the subject by saying:-

It remains the case that all complaints procedures relating to this matter have been exhausted both internally within the Council and externally.

by asking you to shoot the messenger again.

You should be questioning the actions of the Principal Planning Officer, the Planning Manager, the Head of Development Services, Customer Advocacy and the Council’s Corporate Lead over the last few years rather than asking me to review the comparatively new Complaints Policy 2019v1.5 – Section 7.

All I have to say it is that it is not relevant to Planning Control and the interpretation of approved plans and drawings.
Kind regards
Michael Dawson

Attachment:- Shooting the Messenger.

Dear Ms Abbott

I hope by my email to you of the 15th May, that I have made my point sufficiently clear, that none of my emails or letters to South Tyneside Council have ever been abusive and now by this letter, I want to establish that your email of the 29th April, falsely accused me of being an unreasonable and persistent complainant. It is very simply done:

1. there has only ever been one complaint to the Chief Executive that his staff have been giving misinformation to the Local Government Ombudsman and one complaint that his staff have been lying to the Ombudsman is a singularity.
   His staff’s refusal to admit that a structure is nearly 3m than taller than what had been approved for more than seven years, is a far better example of persistent behaviour (from an email thanking the Planning Manager for conceding that the shed was taller than the approved plan allowed 3-Mar-14 to today);
2. it is entirely reasonable to claim that a structure is taller than what had been approved when it is nearly 3 meters taller than planned. The approved drawings/plans say it should have a height of 15.5m at the river end but it has been built to a height 18.2m at that point. While UK Docks and the Council separately held drawings that showed that landward end of the shed was 15.5m, it was a mistake on both, neither were approved and it was probably a fraudulent misrepresentation say either represented the approved height.

It was the Council’s Corporate Lead who said that there is no evidence of the Council giving misinformation to the Ombudsman and to justify that falsehood she had to imply that it was I who was being dishonest and she did this by accusing me of being a persistent and unreasonable complainant by reference to Section F of an earlier version of the code you sent me on 29-Apr-21.

She ignored the advice given to me by a solicitor and she carried out her threat to section me in October 2016:

The Solicitor’s view, off the record, was that UK Docks, in saying they were building the shed to approved plans when they were not, was probably criminal fraud but the police were unlikely to act on a planning issue. He also suggested a civil court may not be be the best way forward but he did say that in his view we needed to raise a new complaint. The new complaint being the misinformation and/or misrepresentation by the Local Authority in supplying information to the LGO.

M Dawson, 2nd & 3rd September 2016

On April the 29th you sent me the current version to the code, Complaints Policy 2019v1.5, and an instruction referring me to Section 7 on ‘Dealing with Unreasonable Behaviour’ and adding, in your view, my behaviour was unreasonable because:

• persistent refusal to accept a decision; persistent refusal to accept explanations;
• continuing to contact us without presenting new and relevant information;
• Adopting 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/the Local Government Ombudsman/the press.

I will deal with your last accusation first: even Mrs Johnson did not repeat the comment about ‘scatter gunning’ when she carried out her threat , and by the way I have not written to any independent auditor, the Standards Board or the local police and whoever told you that I had done so, was simply lying.
Shed and Corruption – Part 4 or select page 2.

Shed and Corruption - Part 3 
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk 
Date: 30/04/2021 (08:28:29 AM BST) 
To: Customer.Advocates@southtyneside.gov.uk, John Rumney 
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, Nicola Robason

Att: Shed and Corruption – Part 3

Dear Paula Abbott,

Thank you for copy of the Council’s Complaints Policy and the list of unanswered correspondence since January 2020. It is a very timely interruption because my first task today was to write a covering email for the letter I was going to post to John Rumney today: Shed and Corruption – Part 3. I only finished checking it at three this morning and attach it now.
I notice on page 4 of the Complaints Policy a comment about unreasonable behaviour. If you look through my correspondence to Mr Swales 2014 to 2016 you will see my main concern is that the shed on the UK Docks’ slipway off River Derive is nearly 3m taller than planned but a Senior Planning Officer told the Local Government Ombudsman that it wasn’t.
In plain language he lied to them and so the Ombudsman found for the Council and the Council then used this to seed enquirers, like MPs and the Press, with the impression that I was making allegations the most notable of which was in attachment 6 to the MP for Berwick on 25th June 2015 by Hayley Johnson:

“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.”

They were not allegations and it looks like Hayley was given similar misinformation to that given to the Ombudsman. I suggest you read ‘Shed and Corruption’ Parts 1 and 2 and take this up with Nicola Robason before we go any further.
She said was going to respond to 2nd to last letter on your list, RE: Conflation of Complaints, but has not done so:

From: Nicola Robason
Date: 24/12/2020 (11:37:26 BST)
To: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
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
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

When the approved drawings say the shed should be 15.5m at the river end but it was built with a height of 18.2m it is not an allegation to say it is taller than permitted, it is the truth.

Kind regards
Michael Dawson

Shed and Corruption - Part 2
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: 12/04/2021 (11:31:07 GMT)
To: Cllr David Francis
Cc: Melanie Todd, Alison Hoy, Hayley Johnson, Nicola Robason

2 Attachments: Shed and Corruption - 2.pdf 
               The Shed and Corruption - Part 1.pdf

You forwarded this message on 14/04/2021 14:45:16 to: 
 John.Rumney@southtynside.gov.uk>.

Dear David,

The Shed and Corruption – Introduction to Part 2

While I was trying to establish that UK Docks had not been given permission retrospectively for the enclosure (shed) on their slipway off River Drive, I think it was you who pointed out that I should not be writing to the Head of Legal Services but to Nicola Robason. The job of Monitoring Officer had been given to her and for the first time for many years, December 2019, I got an honest response from the Council when she said:

“I can confirm that the Council as Local Planning Authority has not received a retrospective planning application from UK Docks.

On reflection I should have have thanked the pair of you but what I really wanted was an admission that the shed was actually nearly 3 meters taller than planned.
Her honesty went further when she added: It is entirely a matter for UK Docks to decide whether or not to submit such an application and the Council has no influence in that matter. However that points to a very high level of collusion between Council Staff and UK Docks.

The Planning Manager had conceded by mid February 2014 that it was taller than planned as you will see from my letter to Melanie of 12th March (The Shed and Corruption – Part 1). He had very carefully worded his misrepresentation about the shed’s height of mid January 2014 and it took 3 further emails to get to the truth about it but not before he seeded the fraudulent misrepresentation that the drawing provided by the Agents, Maughan Reynolds Partnership in September 2013, was not drawn to scale.

By the time we get to the Ombudsman it had become an outright lie with the misinformation fed to the Ombudsman by a senior planning officer – see #21 and #33 in Part 1, by a Senior Planning Officer. In paragraph 37 she says:-

. . The drafter has not specified which end this is and the drawings are not to scale.

Not only has the draughtsman stated that the strip curtains are to be drawn aside to allow the boats to enter and it appears that it is not common knowledge that boats come up the slipway from the river and yet the Ombudsman says in #37:

Mr X says plan 14 shows 15.5 metres as the river end height. The Council has explained to Mr X why this is not the case.

I wrote to Melanie in ‘The Shed and Corruption – Part 1’, because I knew that she was the first person to directly question the Principal Planning Officer, Mr Cunningham, about the height of the shed in September 2013:

From the stamp date on the revised plans, you have received plans on the 06.09.13 the day after construction commenced which show a(n) increased height to the structure to that which was originally approved in 1996. Has the revised height of 15.5metres been approved or is it in breach of the 1996 Planning approval?

He directed her to the Council’s Complaints Procedure (CCP) instead of answering her question and logic rather than anything else provides the answer and it was in breach of the planning approval. That was why UK Docks were ordered to stop work on their shed and did not restart until after the Tyne Gateway Assn (TGA) were misled about UK Docks having approval for it, again, by Mr Cunningham.
When he was asked to produce some evidence after the Town Hall meeting in November 2013 he failed because all he did was to replace the drawing given to him by UK Docks with one the Council produced from their archive. Neither had been approved because they contained the same error, described by Melanie as ‘the revised height of 15.5metres’.
On reviewing Part 1 it occured to me that besides UK Docks plans giving the appearance of having been doctored one could tell from the dates on them that they could never have been approved in 1996 and that was why Mr Cunningham switched (to) the archive drawing.
As I have shown in Part 1 the lie that the was not nearly 3m taller than planned became so embedded that through each stage of the Council’s Complaints Procedure (CCP) it became more and more difficult for them to admit the truth and that included the office of the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO).
They could then tell any enquirers, be they other residents, Councillors such as yourself, MPs and most importantly the Press that any objections were based on allegations and that is an unfounded allegation in itself!
I discovered that they were doing this when I put in a complaint about a money laundering scam on Greens Place but there were difficulties in proving that Planning Office and or Building Control were misinterpreting the ‘rules’ and turning a blind eye to the variation from the plans.
It did not help that they kept on ‘losing’ plans and correspondence either!
UK Docks’ shed was different, mainly because I kept a record of the drawings (plans) and the correspondence on a website that was set up to collect signatures for our Petition in the Spring of 2014. Security issues meant it best to delete the data held for that exercise but the form used to collect it lived on for few years but even that was superseded by modern applications, such as one gets on a mobile phone.
In Part 1, I naturally addressed the problems that we, that is Melanie and I, encountered while our time-lines were merged but my troubles with South Tyneside Council started eighteen months before that with the development in Greens Place and I shall address those in Part 2 of the ‘Shed and Corruption’ which I have attached.
Secondly I will show that the corruption, in the case of UK Docks, actually stems from August of 2013 and thirdly, I will highlight some instances that should really be addressed by those appointed to look into corruption in local services.
Sad to say, after ten years of austerity they are short supply, so it’s up us to make a noise about it.

Kind regards,
Mick Dawson

Covering Email – 12th March 2021
The-Shed-and-Corruption-Part-1.pdf

Dear Melanie,

As I said in the covering email the first thing I have noticed when updating the timeline was that UK Docks had stopped working on their shed in mid September 2013 and did not seriously restart until the huge cranes reappeared in January 2014. Three months is a long time and they would not have stopped unless a ‘Stop Notice’ had been issued.
I have put ‘Stop Notice’ in bunny’s ears because there may have been nothing in writing, just a Gentlemen’s Agreement: if it was only a meter wider UK Docks would have told the Council to get lost but they knew their shed was going to be nearly three meters taller than the one for which they had permission and they did not wish anyone to look closer at the plans because they needed a longer shed as well as the footing laid in 2001 indicated and to rebuild it to correct height was not on, and that was why the pair of drawings were given to Mr Cunningham by the UK Dock’s representative, stamped on the 6th September and forwarded to us, as a pdf document.
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