If a Council Officer receives a complaint he does not wish to do anything about he simply does not answer it. He or she is duty bound to acknowledge its existence so the response is usually accompanied by a rebuttal, such as, the structure had been approved, the noise level was within permitted limits, the complainant was making allegations or a similar excuse found for not taking any action.

When it comes to planning it is a flat denial and the dispute is changed from a structure had not been built to an approved plan (and no enforcement follow up) to an argument about whether it has been built to plan or not and the method used to ensure that your complaint is not upheld is to corrupt the Council’s Complaints Procedure. It is not exclusive to South Tyneside Council and is deceptively simple.

They overwrite the original complaint with a non sequitur or a misrepresentation, a lie in common parlance, and you are steered through to the Local Government Ombudsman where they flatly ignore any evidence given, preferring to give credence to what the Council tell them and you can be assured that they will have been extremely economical with the truth.

When you point this out to the Council the get someone to say:- “It remains the case that all complaints procedures relating to this matter have been exhausted both internally within the Council and externally.”

There is no check on the conduct of any of the Executive of a Local Authority as they can set the rules themselves because there has never been a statutory code covering the conduct of local authority staff in England.

If one complains about a conduct of a Councillor to the Council they make excuses or obscure any facts and you are back with the Council and there is no check on the conduct of the Executive!

One should be able to call on the judiciary if people are caught lying to the Ombudsman or maybe make it a crime to lie to the Ombudsman but that is probably heavy handed and just left to civil law.