Corruption at the Town Hall

From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
Date: 24/01/2020 (10:38:22 BST)
To: BUCK, Simon
Cc: Keith Palmer, Cllr Angela Hamilton

Dear Simon,

I notice that my email to Keith yesterday did not bounce from Emma’s mailbox at parliament.uk. Thank you for removing the block from mick.dawson at the harbourview.

When he alluded to vexatious mail I assumed he had his ear bent by someone at the Town Hall but I’d forgotten that I’d published ‘Corporate Lead and Members of Parliament‘ in NOVEMBER and he may have got the wrong story from that.

I will be editing it during the day to ensure that folk do not pick up the wrong message again and when I have done that I will try and get the Town hall to admit that the shed is nearly 3m taller than permitted.

That has been our problem for over six years with UK Docks and to save another attachment you can look up ‘Denials‘ on the website at the harbour view and note that 40-43 refer to the same correspondence, with firstly the Chief Executive and then Hayley Johnson. The references to my correspondence following the Case’s jaunt around Northumberland appear to have lost and I’ll fill in the gap which has appeared between 30 and 34 over the week end.

You should have noticed by now that I have generally copied Emma for information and I was a bit upset when my email to her the end of OCTOBER ‘Dishonesty at the Town Hall’ was blanked.

I’m fairly certain that I’ve made no pretence that I was still living in South Shields though I am still on Council’s mailing list for notices concerning the payment of rates though they have not been my responsibility since April 2018.

In the meantime I’ll tackle the Town Hall about Sunday working and the sneaky extension to the ‘Shed’ in August 2017 and continue to let Emma know what I’m doing.

I think we can make a case for her and Angela seeing the Chief Executive and putting him on the spot as they did UK Docks in March last year but we can only do that by working together.

Not only did UK Docks shoot themselves in the foot over say they had planning permission, they blasted a hole through the Town Hall’s claim that the shed had been approved.

Kind regards

Michael.

Amble,
5-Dec-19

Dear Nicola,

Freedom of Information Request

I have been advised that you are now the Monitoring Officer for South Tyneside Council having taken over from Mike Harding and I hope you will give the problem of UK Docks Enclosure (shed) on River Drive some consideration. It was built without planning permission but the Council did nothing about it, the excuse being that they said it had been approved.
Earlier this year UK Docks claimed that the Council gave them permission retrospectively for shed on their slipway:

“Hi Mick, I appreciate your arguments, but this far down the line there is nothing we can do. Angela has talked to several relevant people, and the point is the council gave retrospective planning. Which they are allowed to do.”

Resident of Harbour View, 1-May-19.

Angela is a Councillor and I do not believe what they told her was true because an application to extend it, ST/0461/14, was submitted a few days after its completion:

“Building Control Team has confirmed that they sent the completion certificate out on June 17th. The final Building Control inspection was on 13th June.”

Principal Planning Officer, 4-Sep-14.

The application was submitted on 20th June 2014, and that included extending the shed, a week after Building Control inspected the structure, the implication being that it was not in breach of any of the conditions laid down in the original grant.
It was in breach of planning control being nearly 3m too tall and a meter wider than planned and Building Control had turned a blind eye to this fact when they issued the completion certificate.
I maintain that UK Docks never applied for retrospective planning permission for the shed because an enforcement notice had never been issued and you can confirm for me that neither the application nor the grant exist.
A very simple request made under the Freedom of Information Act.
I and quite a few others would appreciate a response and I will supply a full address if you wish to reply in writing.

Yours sincerely
Michael Dawson

Date: 05/12/2019 (17:32:25 BST)
From: mick.dawson@theharbourview.co.uk
To: Nicola Robason
Cc: Emma Lewell-Buck MP, Cllr Angela Hamilton, Mike Harding, Gill Hayton (Solicitor, George Mansbridge, Hayley Johnson, Stephen Hepburn MP, Alison Hoy, Cllr David Francis, Andrew Tilbury
Bcc: 23 Local Residents
Attachments: FoI Request.pdf (46 KB)
Dear Nicola 5-Dec-19.pdf (129 KB)

Dear Nicola,

Please see the Freedom of Information (FOI) request which I have attached. I managed to establish that no retrospective planning application for the shed had been made and I just need you to confirm it. As Monitoring Officer you should be able to do that without any bother. It is a binary choice: Has retrospective planning for the shed been granted: Yes/No.
I have asked your predecessor, Mike Harding, the same question in a different way but he has not answered:

/”Angela and therefore Julie have been misinformed by UK Docks and you can confirm that also. To it bluntly, whoever told them that UK Docks had submitted a retrospective application was lying.”/

We, the local residents, all know that UK Docks never made a request for retrospective planning else we would have had notice of it and we had not. We also knew that the shed had been built nearly 3m taller than permitted before the 5th frame went up but the Council said otherwise and misinformed the Ombudsman about it. The reason for this is now known: firstly to hide misconduct and the second to deflect enquiries and they had been doing that for 5 years.
I can foresee that the Council/UK Docks will try the same trick with ‘retrospective planning’ and this needs to be nipped in the bud hence my FOI and the ‘Dear Nicola’ letter which I have also attached.

Kind regards
Michael