To: Garry Simmonette
CC: George Mansbridge; THV Admin for Circulation;
Emma Lewell-Buck MP;  Stephen Hepburn MP
Cllr John Anglin; Cllr Audrey McMillan; Cllr John Wood

Unplanned Shed – ST/1146/13/COND
(Amended Planning Application – ST/0461/14/FUL.)

Dear Mr Simmonette,

In my email to you on Friday 4th Dec I assumed, possibly wrongly, that you would be familiar with the planning application ST/1146/13  submitted to meet the conditions of the grant of permission ST/0242/96 in 1996. This email is to give you some background but I wish first to dispel a common assumption held about drawing 8296/1A.

Drawing 8296/1A.

It has been assumed, wrongly, in recent correspondence I have had, that the section of the shed on this drawing is the landward end. It is the river end and there is no note to say that it, against standard drawing convention, is otherwise.

Background to ST/1146/13.

In October 2013 Local Residents (20 or so) met in the Littlehaven Hotel, South Shields, to discuss the Shed or Slipway Cover being constructed by UK Docks, nearby, in River Drive. The meeting agreed that the shed was built much higher than planned but this was difficult to prove because the plans provided by the Council could be interpreted to indicate that the height was not materially different from that planned and anyway the Council would not say how high the framework was. The the meeting decided to enlist the help of the Tyne Gateway Association.

About 30 Residents attended  meeting of the Tyne Gateway Assn meeting on 9th November 2013 to which the ward Councillors were invited (Councillors Anglin and MacMillan attended, apologies were given for Councillor Wood).

To the view that the Shed was too high and in the wrong place,* it was added that it was too wide as well. Councillor Anglin said the meeting appeared to be confused about which end of the shed was planned to be 15.5m and that he would try and arrange for a meeting with the Council to clear this up. There is a gradient of nearly 3m between the ends of the shed and the shed is, by all accounts 3 meters too high.

A meeting was arranged on the 25th Nov 2013 with the Council. Three TGA Committee Members, along with two Councillors, Anglin and MacMillan, apologies were again given for Councillor Wood, attended as well.  We were told that the shed was built to plan and that there was nothing we could do about it until the application to add another shed, slipway, rebuild the office block etc. was received.

The width of the shed was measured shortly after as it could be quite easily done by very simple surveying and was found to be a meter wider than planned. It took three more months before the Council admitted that the shed was also too high. Please see email from Mr Atkinson, 13th February 2014, he was the Planning Manager at that time. We were using drawing 8296/14 in our discussion as it did not have misleading errors.

Mr Mansbridge in his letter to Residents, in May 2014, defending his wish not to take enforcement action used 8296/1A to justify his position. This is why I asked you in my email to take a fresh look both drawings and determine for yourself what you think the planned height should be.

It would appear that the shed should be dismantled or a retrospective planning application made for its continued use and that is what you should be addressing, not an application to extend it.

Yours sincerely
Michael Dawson

* it is believed that UK Docks were offered an alternative site by Port of Tyne: it is the extension of River Quay and the infill behind it that put an end to the slipway business in Tyne Dock after all.

PS  who has taken over Mr Atkinson’s responsibility in respect of complaints about planning decisions?

To: Garry Simmonette
CC: George Mansbridge; THV Circulation
Emma Lewell-Buck MP; Stephen Hepburn MP
Cllr John Anglin; Cllr Audrey McMillan; Cllr John Wood
Amended Planning Application – ST/0461/14/FUL.

Dear Garry,

Please note that on the 3rd of November I moved back to Greens Place. Your
Council Tax Section has already been informed of this move.

I have included the Ward Councillors and our MPs because I think they
should be appraised of the goings on at UK Docks on River Drive. I’ve
copied in 2 Local Residents for circulation as they see fit.

Please thank Mr Mansbridge for the letter advising me of the amendment to the Application ST/0461/14/FUL.

I wrote to you directly on the 30th Sept because of some concerns of mine about the application (pdf copy attached). My concerns regarding the planning procedures appear to have been covered but you have not replied and the second part of my email has not been addressed. The shed, UK Docks, River Drive was built without planning permission.
Continue reading Amended Planning Application – ST/0461/14/FUL. →

Amended Planning Application – ST/0461/14/FUL.
From: Michael Dawson of: Amble, Morpeth
Dear Garry,

I am writing to you directly because I wish to draw your attention to two problems with the way your office is handling this application.

First: Mr Mansbridge says at the beginning of his letter about this proposal, “I refer to my previous letter in which I offered you the opportunity to give your views on the above application”. I have not had a previous letter from him and not aware that anyone else has either.

When Mr Atkinson sent out the letter about this application last year there was information about availability of representations, material planning considerations, who makes the planning decision and speaking at Planning Committee. There is no mention of these in Mr Mansbridge letter, 10 Sept 2015. It would appear that Mr Mansbridge has either decided not to delegate this application to Committee or, if I read the last line of his letter correctly, all our representations from last year will be discarded if we do not reply to this letter.

Second: The first shed has been built without planning permission, admission by Customer Advocates, November 2014, but Mr Mansbridge has decided that he need take no action against UK Docks. The shed is, as everybody now agrees, a meter wider than planned although I would like to point out that your office (emails from both your Principal Planning Officer and your Planning Manager) maintained it was built to authorised plans for the first four months of its existence.

The first shed is also 3 meters taller than the plans held by your office allow and the planning application ST/0461/14/FUL shows that UK Docks wish to extend it by by 25% – drawing No 9 of the application. You appear to be accepting an application to extend a structure that does not have planning permission.

Mr Mansbridge says that the shed is not 3 meters taller than planned in spite of evidence to the contrary, indeed he wrote to residents in May last year:- “Apart from the width these dimensions are either entirely in accordance with the approved plan, or subject to such minor deviation that they are properly categorised as non-material changes”.

Drawing 8296/1A is the one preferred by Mr Mansbridge when he says that the height of the shed is not materially different from that planned. He used this drawing (there is no other available unless you count 8296/1B  and he cannot use 8296/14 for he claims wrongly that it is not to scale) when wrote to residents in the same letter to say that although the shed was built without planning permission he was taking no action. He said that the drawing to say that the steelwork at the road end is clearly marked as 15.5m. It is significant that he does not attach the drawing to his letter because the river end is also clearly marked as 15.5m.

The gradient is 2.656m (there is no dispute about that) and both ends cannot be 15.5 meters. Even an untrained eye can see that the dimensions on the road end have been carelessly done. The 12.5m should be pointing to the top and not to the hip of of the ‘mansard’. I suggest you look again at 8296/1A and I think that you cannot but agree with me that whoever advised Mr Mansbridge was not telling him the whole story.

Drawing 8296/1A was not authorised by T&WDC and I believe it was because of the misleading dimensions but they did authorise drawing 8296/2. If the gradient (2.656m) is used to give it a scale the dimensions of the elevation are:- 13m road end, 16m river end and length 22m. This gives much weight to the contention that the shed has been built 3m too high.

I referred to drawing 8296/14, the drawing on the planning portal, above, as it is the one that I used to gain the admission from your Planning Manager that the first shed was not built to authorised plans. It is only a detail but has sufficient information on it to work out that the the river gable end has a height of 15.6m and a width of 12.2m. When your Planning Manager wrongly said it was the road end in an email in January, he said nothing about scale. It was only when he could no longer maintain the myth about which end the drawing applied to, did he say that it was not to scale. Please examine the drawing 8296/14 yourself and tell me that a) it is not to scale, b ) the height is not about 15.5m (rather than 18.5m) and c) the elevation is not the river end. This drawing shows that taking the gradient into account the planned height of the road end elevation should be about 12.5m, not 15.5m as built.

I think I have demonstrated that the current slipway shed is built built 3m higher than any plans provided by South Tyneside. It does not appear to be good planning practice to consider an application to extend a structure when it has been built without planning permission. I now turn to the matter in hand; the Amendment to planning application ST/0461/14/FUL. In case my suspicions aired in the first problem are correct I repeat my representations of last year:-

My understanding is that in 1996 as part of their approval for the current development, Tyne and Wear Development Corporation wrote to the proprietor of UK Docks stating that they would not support further expansion of this site so close to a residential estate. The River Drive development and its further planned development (Office block and additional slipway and shed) goes against the Local Development Framework. To quote “Capitalising on South Tyneside’s environmental assets is about taking measures to:
. Protect and enhance the strategic Green Belt, coastal and wildlife corridors;
. Ensure that development throughout the Borough reflects the character and distinctiveness of its surroundings;
. Boost the town centres of South Shields and Jarrow by linking them to adjacent World Heritage Sites;
. Revive major riverside sites by reducing noise, pollution and risk; etc. Noise – Since the first slipway shed was erected noise emission has substantially increased for local residents. Some of this noise may have been the result of construction but machinery noise such as compressors etc will increase with further development. Machinery noise was never noticeable from my residence in Greens Place (120m west) until this year. Allegedly the applicants record in is unfavourable in other yards owned by UK Docks. STC no doubt have records of this fact.
Visual Amenity – The current Slipway construction on River Drive has resulted in a loss of Visual Amenity. Further development will obviously compound the loss. Visual Amenity can be defined as ‘a measure of the visual quality of a site or area experienced by residents, workers or visitors. It is the collective impact of the visual components which make a site or an area pleasant to be in. It is a consideration of elements which contribute to the visual pleasantness and character of towns, localities and neighbourhoods’.I consider that visual amenity of this area is reduced even further by the addition of the future development of this site.

Yours sincerely
Michael Dawson

Enquiry 2: Slipway Development – River Drive.

Work on this site has recommenced in the last day or so and I am surprised as there is still an outstanding issue which I think has not been addressed.
The structural framework of slipway shelter on river drive had not been built to any plan seen and work on it has continued in spite of objections by local residents.

This raised objections to noise, access and location but only a passing comment about the height. The was no complaint about it not being built to plan because:

There was initially no way of confirming that it was oversize.

The drawings provided by UK docks indicated the the shelter was some 3 meters taller and 1m wider than planned but there were a number of obstacles to getting hold of facts at this time.

• the drawings provided by the Council/UK Docks did not appear to have approval;
• correspondence with the Planning Office indicated that the shelter was approved;
• we did not know the size of the framework;
• questions about the dimensions of the shelter went unanswered (enquirers were being referred to the complaints system)

Subject: Re: Industrial site next to Harbour View [NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED]
From: Matthew
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2014 20:21:08 +0100
CC: Melanie, Mick, Michelle and Rob
To: David

Dear Dave,

Thank you for forwarding this. Clearly STMBC are attempting to get away with just asking the developers to hang plastic sheets at either end of the shed. STMBC’s case appears to be that although some planning conditions were breached (just width and doors, not all of them as I contend in my Stage 2 complaint to Mr Mansbridge), they were not sufficiently breached for the council to take action against them to force a retrospective planning application.
Continue reading Industrial site next to Harbour View. →