The main trouble with South Tyneside Council (STC) is that if they do not wish to consider a complaint they try and kill it and they do this by:-
- making an unfounded contradiction about it;
- not registering it or by registering it incorrectly;
- saying it has already been dealt with internally;
- taking no action and passing it back to a previous stage;
- doing nothing but passing the responsibility for it forward;
- conflating the way it was handled with the complaint itself;
- saying that it relates to a closed complaint.
Each response is often accompanied by a piece of misinformation which is later said to be true, e.g. they misrepresent plans to say that buildings have been approved when they have not and then in the next stage the plans are placed into the category of ‘approved’. If you remove them from of the ‘approved tray’ you will find they have been put back by the time the Local Government Ombudsman (Ombudsman) is involved.
They treat the Ombudsman as a hidden fourth stage in their alternative complaints procedure and the Ombudsman is au fait with this. This facility is not available to people without the system so it means the Ombudsman’s final draft is dictated by the Council.
They then tell MPs, the Press and other complainants etc. that this is final decision and there is nothing that can be about it.
They then use the Ombudsman’s false judgement to ward off any further enquiries. When you consider that they have three stages in their complaints procedure and they treat the Ombudsman as a fourth stage you find that you are forced to repeat yourself at least that many times or give up. If you do not give up you are falsely accused of being an unreasonable and persistent complainant and on top of that the claim is said to be an allegation, Corporate Lead:
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 comment is taken from attachment 6 in a letter to the MP for Berwick 25th June 15. The Council will not tell me what is in the letter nor the other attachments so it is safe to assume that Mrs H Johnson, the Corporate Lead, has been equally dishonest in the main letter and the attachments.
When one raises a complaint about the conduct of a Councillor one is brushed off with the respondent repeating the misinformation given to the Ombudsman and they ignore any complaint about the misconduct of their own senior officers like Mr Johnson because they can.
Finally local authorities like South Tyneside Council can set the rules themselves because there has never been a statutory code covering the conduct of local authority staff in England.