How to have your home destroyed by your corrupt planning dept
In the foreground was my 5 metre east facing garden. Right next to this dining room which doubled as my workspace as it had the most natural light – until the council stripped it from me. bottom right one can see the roof of my dining room.
Dear Mayor Glanville
My apologies but I am putting this online. The purpose of which is to show everyone (who’s interested in council corruption), just how your council treats those who try to expose corruption (of which I am one of the main victims of) within the councils ranks and I don’t believe you would bother reading it otherwise.
I am sorry to see that you have taken the view that there was no corruption involved in the (mislaid) failing of planning permission and then the passing of an identical building that exceeded the height of the failed application AND the approved one.
If you are being truly honest about it, you will be able to answer, or have your planning dept answer, the following unanswered (since the case began) relevant anomalies/questions:-
Your planning department refused planning permission, stating among other detrimental things that “…would adversely affect light and outlook to the rear of these properties to an unacceptable degree, reducing the quality of life of these residents”
The full detriment to the surrounding existing properties was detailed by the planning dept. In a 4 page report which your planning dept “mislaid” to the public AND to councillor Sylvia Anderson (who was asked to stand down by the then leader Max Caller) for revealing Hackneys corrupt planning depts methods to me and acquiring the councils “mislaid” documents.
The height of the failed application was to be 7.1 metres. Minuscule changes were made – the biggest being a whopping 8 inch reduction in the height. No explanation was given how this 8’” reduction would reduce or reverse the detriment that they had detailed in the first refusal.
Miraculously, all the UDPS (policies to guide the councils decision making) that it was failed on, were mislaid and ignored.
The final height of the building came to 7.2 metres. and I forced your regulatory service to admit that was in breach of planning, however they said that they could not prove whether the ground had been sunk. I offered them a before and after photo of the existing rear wall whereby all they had to do was count the courses of bricks (which remained the same as the ground was not lowered). Alas, your regulatory services declined my offer, as they had no intention of digging up your councils underhanded corrupt practices.
The planning officers Cindy Badoe, Femi Nwanzi and Kelvin Williams were deeply involved in this abuse of office. They wrote to potential objectors on the 23rd Dec, knowing full well (as it’s a practice they’ve continued) that most people would be busy doing other things over Christmas and that they were closed, so no one could ask them anything until early January and even then, Ms Badoe was apparently still on holiday. Despite phoning and leaving messages at least 15 times, Ms Badoe was unavailable throughout the consultation process. She only called me back after I had made a complaint to Max Caller. They also stated that they would be informing residents when the neighbourhood committee would be held, which they had no intention of doing and sure enough they didn’t.
The second application which they approved, omitted ALL the detriment that they had clearly laid out in the first and they fabricated measurements to the extent that my 5 meter garden stretched to 8meters which also falls short of the councils UDP policies.
They approved the second application 3-4 days before the deadline they gave to objectors, showing that they had no concerns whatsoever about the damage they knew it would cause or any interest in objectors views.
One of the reasons that they approved it 4 days before the objectors deadline, was because they had to get it through the NC before the Secretary of State for the Environments Inspector stepped in, who also failed the first application, criticising the planning officers/developers for using outdated merits from the 70s.
Once the SoSftE had made its decree (failing it because the site was too small) it would have been impossible for your corrupt officers to change and so they greased the second application through the NC before he/she even visited. Thus rendering the SoSftE’s refusal irrelevant. One would have thought, the governments officer would have more power over a local councils corrupted planning department. But the SoSftE said there’s nothing they can do about it.
Your planning dept also “mislaid” the SoSftE’s report which also showed the true detriment this development would cause.
Your planning officers ensured (by telling us that they would inform us of the dates and then not doing so) that there would be no objectors at the NC (as we were still waiting for them to inform us).
In the report submitted to the NC there were at least 20 discrepancies such as falsified measurements, L shaped pictures design to cut out peoples kitchens or gardens, misleading statements e.g.
“…would adversely affect light and outlook to the rear of these properties to an unacceptable degree, reducing the quality of life of these residents”
got changed to
“…Mr Lane will lose his light in the morning only”
– even this new statement was designed to mislead as the morning light was the only light my previous home received – so Mr Lane will lose 100% of his light and have to keep his lights on all day would have been a little more truthful.
In fact in the 2nd report, there was just one sentence hidden deep within 4 pages of text that referred to the failed application. What was a terrible idea that would cause too much damage to the environment of the existing properties, had now become a wonderful idea and caused no detriment at all and all because the building (on paper as it was never carried out) was to be lowered by 8”
The application was passed by all councillors present (including laughably Chit Chong from the Green party) except for Sylvia Anderson who pointed out to all present that this was too close and likely to cause a lot of environmental damage to the existing surrounding properties. She was ignored.
I was informed by Councillor John Hudson that if there were any anomalies (in this case there were many) that I could contact the head of the council and ask him to revoke the decision. But unfortunately he (Max Caller) joined in with the scurrilous smear campaign your planning officers launched against me.
He asked the officers to arrange a meeting with me but they already knew i would be asking them questions which they could not answer without incriminating themselves. So the corrupted officers orchestrated a libelous smear campaign against me, saying that they couldn’t entertain a meeting because I had threatened Ms Badoe (in the one telephone conversation I was able to get with her). She would not answer any questions and kept refering me to her manager (Nwanzi) – after leaving me on hold for around 5 minutes (in which she plotted with Nwanzi to come up with their false accusations), after which she had agreed to come to my home to “see what all the fuss was about” (although it was plain to see she and Nwanzi knew full well what the fuss was about) .
A simple question would be explain how you felt the 8” reduction would alleviate the damage you yourselves have detailed in your “mislaid report. Or why did you pass the application 4 days before the deadline you gave to objectors. Or why did you lie about measurements (my garden went from 5 to 8 metres). Shortly after this conversation on the day of our meeting whereby I had a planning lawyer arranged, they cancelled the meeting, stating (in correspondence) that I had threatened Ms Badoe in “words and tone”. What they didn’t know at the time, is that I had recorded my conversation with Badoe and so could prove without any doubt, that she and her colleagues were lying – I had not threatened her at all. They merely changed their statement each time they were proven to lie (oddly the subsequent Ombudsmans whitewashed investigation allowed them to change this one to my “tone” was threatening – omitting the “words” were threatening as they knew by now that I had recorded the conversation. They simply refused to listen to the recording and my assurances that no such threats were made. It suited them to continue with this story (regardless of the taped evidence to prove them wrong).
unsurprisingly, the officers involved have never come up with any statement as to what it is I allegedly said to threaten them and the council have not involved the police (which is their usual procedure when one of their staff is threatened). I would have been happy if they did call the police as they would have seen through the lies of the involved officers very quickly. I asked Dianne Abbott to intervene at the time but she was able to have not one of my concerns answered and came back with she didn’t know who to believe and so did nothing.
There are many more things you could ask your corrupted officers and each question would see them floundering, but I believe that you know this already and you simply want to carry on (like your predecessors Max Caller and Jules Pipe who made Jessica Crowe deputy mayor in charge of Hackneys environment, knowing full well that she was involved in this (she was one of the councillors that approved it).
The story continues with once everyone involved in your establishment knew full well about the real damage – they awarded the developers £4k of council tax payers money for their environmentally friendly eco design – of course no mention was made of the loss of light, privacy and an overbearing loss of amenity it had stripped from the surrounding homes.
Your officers abused their office, destroying many peoples homes – mine was the worst hit directly behind and facing east. They then covered up what they had done by mislaying all documents that they themselves had issued detailing the damage, ignored the fire officers report (on the first application the fire officer said operations could be put in “jeopardy” so your corrupt officers didn’t bother getting a fire officers report for the second application, as they knew he would say something like – what difference does 8” make? Or it’s now even higher than the one I did my initial report for, making matters worse – Fire fighting operations will still be jeopardised by lack of access.
You don’t have to do much to find out they are corrupt – you could just ask them to answer how they went from failure to passing by reducing the building by 8 inches? Or what procedure did they use to ignore the deadline for objectors, Or how do they justify ignoring the fire officers report, Or why they can’t expand on their false accusations of threatening words (although this ones obvious). Or why they felt it necessary to “mislay” or hide from public and councillors view, the true picture of the damage that they knew it would cause. Or Why your council has continued to defend their actions whilst providing no answers to the above, Or how does what they did, comply with any of the udp policies designed to stop this sort of corruption from happening?.
You have advised me to go through council complaints and the ombudsman (which I did at the time), between both of them, I was unable to get any of my questions answered and that’s why I am asking you (I will ask each new mayor until I get one honest enough to investigate).
When I contacted your complaints dept. One Debbie Davey (I believe she was head of complaints) felt that she needed to “concoct” a story about me in order to side tract or obfuscate. When I contacted the ombudsman, she said she was not allowed to comment on the merits of the councils decision making, as most of their lies are in the merits (or non merits) of the case, she was not allowed to ask any relevant questions. Although she did allow Cindy Badoe to change her false statement of falsely accusing me of threatening her in “words and tone” to “tone” – The ombusdsmans inspector allowed your officers to repeatedly change their story after it was pointed out to them to be untrue (which is a typical thing that liars do).
As far as I’m aware The ombudsmans inspector did not question them on why they repeatedly changed their statements. I was not privy to any of her investigation (if indeed she did one).
Subsequent FOI reports show that the ombudsman was biased towards the council from the start. In correspondence between Kelvin Williams and your complaints dept (Ms Debbie Davey) she said that “she (the ombudsmans Inspector) understands the council’s point of view but she says that she still requires the documents in order that she can demonstrate (to me) that she has looked into the case properly”. This is not the sort of statement one would expect from an ombudsman who normally should be unbiased.
You say “I am always happy to investigate resident’s complaints and enquiries” then you should be happy to get your staff to answer the serious unanswered concerns some of which I have detailed above.
The reason that I am unable to “move on” is because I was libelous accused of something I am innocent of, forced to uproot myself and my family and move because I could not wake up every morning to see this 7.2 metre high shed like monstrosity blotting out all light and amenity and knowing that my home was destroyed by some very deceitful unworthy characters employed by your council.
Re – “I have made enquiries with the Council’s Planning service and have advised that the property known as 108a Palatine Road, granted planning permission in 2000, has been built in accordance with the approved plans.”
Here you are either misled or you are doing what all involved have done and closing ranks to cover up this scandal. It has not been “built in accordance with the approved plans” as they clearly stated 6.9metres high the final development went to 7.2 (there is documented evidence of this).
Finally if a reduction of 8 inches was supposed to alleviate the detriment the planning office clearly detailed (then mislaid) then allowing it to go pass its illegally approved height by a further 12 inches would (according to your planning officers rational) cause at least a third more damage than they had originally detailed.
The damage your council and its corrupt officers have done to my mental health and any trust I had for those in authority is immense. I am a Shirley Oaks Childrens home survivor (it’s taken 50 years for us to uncover the criminals that called themselves Lambeth council and now they are finally exposed). My first home, which your council deliberately destroyed, was more of an achievement for me than most people buying their first home (I had no help, no holidays – just working day and night) and your council wrecked it, ran a smear campaign against me and then covered it up. I should also point out that in the midst of your council destroying my property in 2000, I had a child, my father died and unexpectedly my partners father died – all these events pale in comparison to the anguish and torment your council and its operatives put me through – They are on par to the horrors of the childrens home where those in authority that you think you can trust, end up physically and mentally abusing you. That’s why I shall continue exposing this issue regardless, of your un-investigated, indefensible denials.
Best regards
Steve Lane
PS. Words in quotes are from your council some have been obtained through the FOI which provides a damaging incite into how your council operates (more like a criminal gang).
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