One must have completed the Complaints Procedure adopted by South Tyneside Council (STC) or the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) will not even consider it. The adopted procedure is modified from the guidelines and by the time you get to the 2nd or 3rd Stage as the complaint is passed up to the Chief Executive, you will find the main reason or reasons for the complaint has or have been removed and genereally replaced by a direct contradiction.
The Ombudsman is then presented a choice between the original complaint, the truth or the fiction presented by South Tyneside Council and in the first case South Tyneside Council say that the rebuild was permitted when it was not and in the second they hide the fact that the development has no permission with the a claim by the Monitoring Officer:-“I understand that all complaints procedures regarding this matter have been exhausted both internally within the Council and externally. Nicola Robason, 19-Dec-19.
71 Greens Place
The complaint was that planning officer in charge of the application for a new extension allowed it to expand to fill the whole yard and did not follow general planning guidelines SDP9.
The Council also allowed the owner to replace a 3-4m fence partition with a 4– 6.5m wall partition, contributing to a major loss of amenity to number 70. While the case was with the Ombudsman the fence had been replaced by a wall yet in her final decision, 13 011 721, November 2013, the Ombusman said:-
Summary: The Council followed the correct planning process to reach its decision to grant permission to Mr B’s neighbour. The Council took account of the affect on Mr B’s amenity, and took account of relevant planning policy.
The complaint 230018 was raised on 3rd December 2013, long before the wall was completed. It was soon apparent that the wall had reached the length to show the builder of the party wall had been instucted to revert to the plans for it first submitted to the Council re ST/0996/12/FUL in 2012.
It was first further complicated by the fact that the owner of 71 put in a retrospective application for redevelopment of his property in July ’13 but that would have conflicted with the Ombudsman’s findings so South Tyneside Council rewrote the retrospective application for the owner of 71, so that it did not. It also meant that the owner of 71, Mr K Haig need do nothing to correct the overbuild of his property.
UK Docks’ Slipway Shed
Simply their shed was nearly 3m taller than planned and they needed to hide this fact so that they could lengthen it later, which they did in 2017. South Tyneside Council helped them to hide this in what appears to be a tried and tested method of corrupting their complaints procedure.
Described in Part 2 of Shed and Corruption.
Secondly they used people with an interest vested in UK Docks, see page 2 of Shed and Corruption, Part 1. Ken Haig was one of the first to side with the Council against our protest that UK Docks’ shed was some 3m taller than planned. He was a director of HB Hydraulics and probably the acting chairman until the appointment of the current one in 2019 and while it was obvious to the protestors, South Tyneside Council appeared to be blind to the conflict of interest.
The complaint was that their shed was nearly 3m taller and a meter wider than planned and South Tyneside Council had done nothing about it and the Ombudsman’s final decision, 14 015 052, April 2015 shows that she had :
Summary: 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. Local residents complained but the Council found the developer could still build the shed. However, the developer built it almost a metre wider than he should have done. 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.
Note that the Chief Executive of STC is ultimately responsible for the process as all complaints are routed through his office on their way to be externally examined by the Ombudsman and as one can see from the two examples given above.
One only had to read though the guidance given in SPD9 to see that the Planning Officer in charge of 71, and 72 Greens Place was well out of order and so was the Planning Manager when he said that UK Docks’ shed had been in accordance with the approved plans when the indicated otherwise and to carefully study the approved plans to see that UK Docks’ shed was taller by nearly 3m than the plans allowed.
Conclusion
The Ombudsman was then presented a choice between the original complaint based on the truth or the fiction presented by South Tyneside Council and in the first case South Tyneside Council say that the rebuild was permitted when it was not and in the second they hide the fact that the development has is 3m taller than permitted with the claim by the Monitoring Officer:-“I understand that all complaints procedures regarding this matter have been exhausted both internally within the Council and externally.
Nicola Robason, 19-Dec-19.
When the Inspectors for the Ombudsman were asked to consider externally between the truth, as presented by the people complaining or the misinformation and/or misrepresentation presented internally by STC, they both chose the latter, for both 71 Greens Place and the Slipway shed.
‘Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive’