SUMMARY OF COMPLAINT: By the complainant Keith Edmunds
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INTRODUCTION A complaint was originally made to the LGO in 2007 about an adjacent property to the one in question. Portsmouth City Councilʼs planning department is particularly corrupt and many unbelievable decisions have been made over the years, which clearly have not followed any planning laws. In my case the laws that were ignored was the Prescription Act and an individualʼs right to light within that Act. The complaint was investigated and draft key facts were issued by the LGO which were damning in their findings. The Chief Executive Portsmouth City Council agreed with these findings, the main one being that light readings had been manipulated and falsified by the Council, and had not even been done for the worst affected windows. The LGO wrote to the Chief Executive Portsmouth City Council after the issue of the damning Draft Report asking the Council to ʻprovide a local settlement even at this late stageʼ and asks ʻwould you like us to provide you with a copy of our press release on the final report?ʼ It should be noted that press releases are only made by the LGO when cases of maladministration have been found and proven: The Chief Executive refused to agree to a ʻlocal settlementʼ telling the LGO that he did not have the power to impose it on him. At this stage the LGO then issued a final report finding that the Council had done no wrong, presumably so that he should not demonstrate his impotence and lack of power in the face of an intransigent Council. IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT DURING THE INVESTIGATION IT WAS ESTABLISHED THAT THE CITY PLANNING OFFICER HAD DECLARED AN INTEREST WITH THE OWNER OF THE PROPERTY APPLYING FOR THE PLANNING PERMISSION. The Political Head of Planning in Portsmouth is also the controversial MP for Portsmouth South - Mike Hancock MP. A clear and blatant conflict of interest holding this post and being an MP at the same time. THIS COMPLAINT A further planning application was made by the applicant to build an extension on the adjacent building in 2009, which had been built in 2003. This was objected to by the neighbours on the same grounds as before, loss of light. Additionally the Council had given a written commitment that the building would not be further extended during the previous planning application to build the building. The Council supported the application and during the planning procedures lied to planning committee in the first planning brief. I accused them of corruption at planning committee and the application was suspended. It came back to planning committee on two more occasions and I was able to show that further lies were told to planning committee by both the responsible planning officer and the Deputy City Planning Officer, chairing the Committee. The responsible planning officer stated that light calculations had been carried out, when they had not, and when questioned which window they had been carried out on pointed to a window that did not exist. The Deputy City Planning Officer stated that the LGO had already investigated a complaint by me about this property and found for the Council, which the LGO had not. I complained to the LGO and an investigation was started. During the Investigation the LGO sent me documents he had received from the Council in their defence, but refused to release others. I put in a Freedom of Information request to the Council to obtain these documents which I duly received. They were letters I had written to my MP (also the head of Planning as a Councillor) accusing them of planning corruption and asking what he was going to do about it? It was at this stage that it became apparent that the LGO was not going to properly investigate my complaint, as an arranged visit to me to investigate was cancelled. A premature report was issued by the LGO finding that the Council had done no wrong. I put in the first of many complaints to the LGO stating that her findings had been issued without me having been able to comment on them. I further pointed out that she had ordered the Council to provide the light calculations they had carried out (Which I had previously received through an FOI Request showing that they had been done on a window that did not exist and were therefore fabricated and false). The Council had already specifically told the LGO, during theʼInvestigation,ʼ that they had carried out proper light readings on an existing window. The Council failed to provide me with this document and I complained to the LGO again. Sometime later, I received the document which clearly showed that the Council had lied to the LGO about light readings and that they could not have been carried out, as the window, they claimed to have used, did not exist. It must have been obvious to the LGO that this was the case as they would have received the same document at the same time as I did. I then received a letter from the LGO stating that as I had not commented on the Councilʼs document, they were closing the case. Fortunately I had replied and emailed her to say so. I was then amazed to get a further letter from the LGO stating that although I had proved that the Council had lied to her about the central tenet of my complaint and therefore they did not have a leg to stand on, she was not going to change her decision! CONCLUSION As a result of my previous experiences with the LGO and the conclusive abundance of other evidence on this website, it was obvious to me that the Local Government Ombudsman is an entirely corrupt Institution, primarily concerned with covering up for corrupt Local Authorities. I therefore did not expect to succeed with this complaint, as a consequence, from the beginning. I went ahead with it however, as it was my intention in submitting the complaint to escalate it, as soon as possible, to the Ombudsman herself, in order to ascertain whether or not the Institutional corruption went right to the top ( normally, when the public sector is exposed, junior officials are blamed to protect their managers). The evidence above is, without any doubt, proof that the corruption goes right to the top of the Local Government Ombudsman Institution. This Ombudsman, in protecting a corrupt Portsmouth City Council, was personally prepared to: 1. Accept statements from the Council that were clearly false. 2. Ignore evidence from me proving that the statements were false. 3. Accepted proof that the Council had lied to her during an investigation and had done nothing about it. 4. Issue a final report without me being able to comment properly on it. 5. Ignored complaints from me that there were statements in her final report, that were clearly not true and could so be proved. 6. Ignored a number of complaints about the issues at 1 to 4 above, that was blatantly and clearly unjust, and infringed my human rights. If you have any doubts about the damning statement above, all the evidence is provided as the complete live study. The Local Government Ombudsman is an entirely corrupt Institution and as such is a complete waste of taxpayerʼs money. In itʼs current form it should be abolished as it neither follows the letter nor the spirit of the Local Government Act 1974, which set it up. [Back to the top] |