by south1 » Sat Nov 14, 2015 12:03 pm
The Council has upheld my appeal. It has redacted names in the documents but it has accepted to provide me with the documents that I requested under my FOI request.
However the problem is that the Council has not been able to provide me with all documents requested because it says that normally documents used in applications for lawful development certificates are recorded in the database of the computer of the Council before being destroyed at the end of the application but for unknown reasons some documents were not recorded.
The Council told me that the planning officer who was in charge of this application does not work anymore for the Council and as a consequence it is not possible to ask him why he has not recorded also these documents.
Most of documents that I requested concern documents used by this neighbour to prove that he was using his property as a block of flats for example previous utilities bills addressed to one of the two flats and new utilities bills addressed only to address of the building without stated Flat 1 or Flat 2 etc..However very strangely the missing documents are the new utility bills i.e. those who maybe suggest that this property could have been transformed into a single dwelling
I think that the fact that his property has always had only one letter box means that it is irrelevant whether or not the letters where addressed to one of the two flats or to the address of the building because as long as the name of my neighbour was in the envelop he was sure to receive the letters irrespectively of whether his property was used as a block of flats or a single dwelling. However these documents were the only small documentary evidence which suggest that maybe this property was used as a single dwelling house and very strangely they are missing
The questions are the following:
Strangely the planning officer who dealt with this application left the Council at the end of the new application for planning permission to split again my neighbour’s property into flats i.e. when my neighbour got what he wanted i.e. a block of flats with windows with clear glasses. Could there be undue influence or other kind of dishonest behaviour? Could this explain also why these large windows with clear glasses were allowed even though they did not have a similar appearance to the existing one contrary to Condition A3(a) of Schedule 2, Part 1, Class A of the GPDO 2008?
The question is also how can I use in my favour this defect in the processing of the LDC? I suppose that I can make a complaint to the Council because this LDC has not been properly processed but can I say also that officially if these documents were not recorded in the database of the computer of the Council they have never existed even thought the Council makes reference to them in its report to grant the LDC? Moreover it is entirely impossible to check the genuineness of these documents because they are missing
Which kind of complaint can I made to the Information Commissioner? Can I make a complaint because the data concerning this LDC have not been processed fairly?