And We Thought 13 Was Awful

Marjorie spotted this article in the Telegraph yesterday:

My goodness. We only had 13 officers raid our "business premises and home." (Of course, included in the 13 was the Malvern Hills District Council parking officer and its graffiti officer -- which never made any sense to us.)

I'm not familiar with the Affair of Mr Vance Miller and the chipboard allegations. But I have every sympathy with him.

From our standpoint the 10 January 2008 raid on our property, and what we've always maintained was trespass into our home, was "not based on any reliable material." We also feel that officers of the Malvern Hills District Council -- possibly motivated by some sort of misguided effort to "correct" their original planning mistake by closing down our dog resort -- let their ambition colour their "thinking thereafter" and led them to lose their objectivity.

I hope that "our" two Councils pause to reflect on Judge Foster's opinion, and the consequences for the Oldham council.

The Malvern Hills District Council continued to back the activities of Andy Ferguson, despite the fact that they knew at the time that none of his many visits to our property, slinking around in our bushes, resulted in the measurement of any statutory noise disturbance. They allowed him to make silly notations about our neighbours relaxing on their sun loungers -- when they should have told him to cut it out.

Oldham has "suspended" its apparently over zealous Trading Standards officer, Tony Allen. We can hope that Malvern might get the message.

In the meantime, today is the deadline for the Malvern council to disclose all documents to us pursuant to our requests under the Freedom of Information Act. We look forward to receiving a large bundle, undoubtedly liberally redacted.

"No Further Monitoring"

After some prodding by me and possibly some hints from the Local Government Ombudsman, Nigel Snape finally wrote me a letter on 7 December 2009. Nigel is a solicitor, and the Head of Legal & Governance at Malvern Hills District Council.

Nigel wrote, "Extensive monitoring has been carried [out] over a period of months comprising both surveillance visits and automatic noise level monitoring. Whilst some barking has been noted during some of the visits and automated monitoring, the nature and extent of this barking has not been sufficient to establish a statutory nuisance within the terms of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

"No further monitoring or other investigation will now be undertaken in relation to this matter unless there is a material change of conditions or activity at the boarding kennels at Lucies Farm."

On 29 July 2009 Andy Fergson of the Council wrote to folks who had complained about our alleged noise. Andy wrote about "the history at this site and the known attitude and approach of the proprietor of the kennels with regard to any 'goodwill' or informal agreement."

As we have said all along -- since early 2005 -- there simply is no statutory noise nuisance here. Our house is closer to the dog resort than any of our neighbours, and if there was problematical barking we would naturally do something about it. Pronto. It looks like our "goodwill" was demonstrated by the fact that we were not creating a statutory nuisance in the first place.

The Malvern Hills District Council did not seem to understand that the number of neighbours who complained about our alleged noise was irrelevant. We were either creating a statutory disturbance -- something that can be measured -- or we weren't.

And we weren't.

No surprise for us, but it makes us wonder, more than ever, why Andy Ferguson didn't give up after three or four observations. Why at least 24 site visits in less than six months?

In my view most of the Council folks are simply bullies.

Photo credit: LGG (Leading legal training provider for local authorities) - http://www.lgg.org.uk/about