They also play off roles of the Planner and Building Inspector in such a way as to avoid responsibility for making sure that buildings are built to plan. It means they need not take enforcement action.

There is a myth which the Council are quite happy for people to believe and that is: that a building built without planning permission is illegal – it is not.
It is not until the Council’s Enforcement Officer tells them to build it without material variation from the approved plans and they refuse to do so, that the question of legality arises.
There are loopholes used by STC to allow buildings to be built without planning permission.

• they permit the use of the term ‘legal’ to mean compliant.
• they are very liberal with the borderline between what is and what is not material variation.
• building inspectors are elusive and difficult to get hold of and planners tend not pass messages on to them.
• the building inspectors are extremely lax in bringing breaches in planning/building control to the attention of the enforcement officer.

The Council generally treat the Ombudsman as a further stage in the complaints procedure which is not available to people without the system and that obliges the Ombudsman to complicit in the corruption of the complaints procedure by simply dismissing the complaint against them and puts you back to square one, in the case of UK Docks to November 2013, by saying:

I consider that your latest complaint remains that of your previous complaint which has already been determined.

The Ombudsman, 30 May 2017