Thank you Brent for your response to my complaint of HBC, sent to your MD (attachment “Complaint”). In summary my complaint is two fold: 1. That the original decision of the HBC Planning committee on Wednesday 12th October 2005 to agree to an application by Mr Chris Power to extend his property, was in error, since it was based on inaccurate evidence. 2. That subsequent to this decision, HBC ignored law breaking by Mr Power and his agents. As a result my wife and I have been caused great distress, and the value of our home has been reduced. From society’s viewpoint your enduring contribution has been that you have encouraged bad behaviour. All of us, from community minded individuals to politicians and public servants have a responsibility to encourage social cohesion and discourage bad behaviour. As you were advisor to the planning committee I would of course expect you to support the committee’s view, and Friday’s letter of rebuttal is typically robust. I address its inconsistencies below, but before I do, I note your two enclosures; 1. A copy of the Party Wall Act 1996 booklet 2. An extract of the Agenda for the meeting of 15th October 2005 In fact, both are superfluous to my needs, for as an original objector to the proposal I was circulated with the agenda, and if you look at the web site I have constructed to expose this shameful incident [ www.harassmentfantasy.org/party.aspx ] you will note that I recommend the Party Wall Act booklet – meaning of course that by the time I created the web site I was well aware of the Party Wall Act explanatory booklet. In passing, I recommend that you have a look around this website, for it’s a living document, monitoring both the detail of the iincident decision and its wider ramifications. At the time your committee passed the application I knew nothing of the Act or its explanatory booklet, and it wasn’t until last December 2006 that a friend in the building trade gave me a copy and advised me to read it, since on 26th November 2006 our neighbour had used a chain saw to redesign his staircase and you couldn’t clearly see your hand in front of your face for the swirling fumes and dust blasted into our home. I therefore read it avidly. It seems to me that HBC badly let me – and central government – down by not advising both developer and neighbours of the existence of this controlling legislation. The arrangement of these cottages is such that there is not one room upstairs or down that doesn’t share a party wall with neighbours. My supplementary questions are as follows: 1. The Party Wall Act booklet was published and freely available from March 2004 – 18 months before your committee approved this application. Why didn’t you therefore hand a copy of this booklet to our next door neighbour at the time his application was approved, and if you did, why was it ignored? Why didn’t you also give the booklet to neighbours who would be affected by the plans you passed, and if you did, why miss us out?
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Even if you have only recently learned about this booklet, why don’t you contact everyone affected by the plans you have approved and say “Hey, this may well affect you. Read it. The council may not protect you, but hey ho, get a solicitor because forewarned…” Why do you wait for two years before you send me a copy? It seems incredible that the national arm of public service deems it appropriate to pass an Act offering protection against bad behaviour in the building trade and yet the local arm is ignorant of it. Do we not have a public servant to co-ordinate these matters? It was not simply a matter of chain saw fallout, but you should look ( in the above link) at the pictures of the one-way gate separating our gardens. This one-way gate is padlocked on one side – theirs, giving 1 way 24 hour access, which has been used many times. Are you really saying there is no recourse against people who blatantly transgress public rules and that despite these continual transgressions they should be allowed to enjoy the rights given at a committee meeting 2 years earlier? Neither was trespass limited to this. Ladders have been put against our cottage wall so that agents of our next door neighbour can get on to our roof to walk over it and in transit to their roof. Do you want to reward this kind of trespass? Is it not outside the law that no notice is given of structural changes?
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Brent, you may imagine how upset I was to experience all this in the aftermath of the blunder of October 12th. And if you think that I alone suffered, know that in fact I was out at work most of the time, and the chief sufferer was my wife, who was confined to bed with a badly broken leg for much of the period. From her bed, she saw these workmen walk over our roof. You can imagine that she was in tears. She also photographed the range of vehicles parked in our garden, and tolerated their daily abuse. And lest you believe she is some kind of professional complainer, I ask you to read her profile on our family website, authenticated by hundreds throughout the area – an ex Brown Owl with 2 daughters as local head teachers who has spent 1000’s of hours in public service serving the bereaved, the sick, the elderly, and mentoring children with behaviour problems http://www.robertarmstrong.co.uk/Lynne.aspx ] I turn now to the papers drawn up by your colleagues, including the written objections to the proposal. I begin with a letter of support for the extension from our other next door neighbour, an older lady we care for, and been good neighbours to for several years. The Agenda notes that “the single story kitchen extension is adjacent to Baxenden Fold Cottage who has sent in a letter of support for the application” [page 11 lines 3-5]. This persuasive support is reduced when you realise that the extension is nowhere near Baxenden Fold Cottage. Look at http://www.harassmentfantasy.org/party.aspx which shows you one end of the kitchen extension which is within inches of a fence which they erected to separate our land from theirs. Adjacent to Baxenden Fold Cottage? Until one learns the truth, one is impressed by the existence of a letter of support. She can’t see any part of the proposed extension work from her property.
Doesn’t that tell you something about the size of the lie that was told in support of the proposal to extend the property? The lie played a significant part in approving this planning application, which discredits the application. In similar vein, the author of this paper writes [page 10 2nd para from the bottom] “The original scheme included the provision of stables on land within the ownership of the applicant but outside the domestic cartilage. Due to objections from the Head of Environmental Health on the grounds of its close proximity to neighbouring property this has now been removed from the application” It seemed that the proposer was being reasonable in reducing the extent of his plans until you learn that animal waste is now collected, bagged in HBC refuse bags, and left for the council refuse department to take away closer to neighbouring property than the stables were planned to be situated. Moreover, when an environmental officer came to look at an animal shed situated next to the kitchen extension he said “It doesn’t matter if they keep elephants in it”! Brent, there are a number of points in the report that confound my normally clear thinking. One such nonsense is the statement in the first para of that since our bathroom window is north facing, that it is less vital that obstruction to light become an issue. Brent, my bathroom window is not a plant in need of God’s light to survive, but a conduit to allow some light to me as I shave. I’d say that reducing my light from dim to dimmer is more worrying than from bright to less bright! And in the same paragraph you state that the general practice is to limit increases in extensions to 50% of a building’s footprint. In the next line you say that the footprint growth is not much over 50% so hey ho, let the plans go through! And it just occurred to me Brent that the withdrawal of the initial plan to build stables may have reduced the plan to not much over 50%, and by introducing portable sheds and giving bags of animal poo to the dustbin men you get what you wanted in the first place. What a strategy, Brent. Perhaps the most awful aspect of the development has been the resulting increase in vehicular traffic. As I write this message there are currently 4 cars outside for a normal Sunday afternoon – 3 on their land and a visitor to them parked on what has become known as no man’s land, outside our property. This, in what is currently a 2 bedroomed cottage. Is it not perfectly reasonable to project that as a 4 bedroomed house it will attract even more visitors? Moreover the increase in vehicular traffic carrying building supplies has been photographed and can be seen on http://www.harassmentfantasy.org/Photos.aspx On page 11 para 3 line 4 it is written “There can be no justification for refusing the application on grounds that there would be an increase in vehicular traffic during building work.” This confusing sentence I now assume means that regardless of the inevitable increase in traffic everyone must grit their teeth and bear it. This community is serviced naturally by water and sewer pipes, and I assume that the author of this agenda is stating that when the underground infrastructure is damaged, the community owning the land must meet the cost of repairs. This dictat beggars belief, smacks of Big Brother, and is morally unjust. Brent, I find your brief covering letter inadequate.
In particular you assertion that I have been selective in my quotations, since in your opinion the applicant was simply substituting one dwelling for another “albeit a larger one”. Thank God that planners in Lancaster, where I recently worked, Chester and York work to a different agenda. I believe that the plethora of untruths and abuses demand a rehearing of the case at the very least. More appropriately, it demands that you say clearly to our next door neighbours that their ploy has earned them the loss of planning permission. As for HBC I am at a loss to describe your ineptitude. The wool has been pulled over your eyes, and I hope the ombudsman will take you to task. As for me, I missed seeing my daughter run in the Great North Run today, in order to put this missive together. She runs to collect money for Shelter, the antithesis of what these neighbours of us are all about. I pray for a slump in property prices so that distasteful behaviour like this (this isn’t their only property) and those of property speculators everywhere is stopped. Don’t you?
Sincerely Robert Armstrong m 07973 370123 h 01254 381861 e robertarmstrong@msn.com w www.harassmentfantasy.org