Dave N Doreen Green
Sorry, this is long winded but stay with it:-)
I received a Stage 3 response today from a complaint I raised to STC which originated on 14thMarch 2024 and was related to what I described to them as ‘Sabotaging residents ability to respond to the Consultation on the Draft Local Plan Reg 19 which included Policy SP8 Fellgate Sustainable Growth Area’. I gave many concerns but the main one I focused on was {The link to the Draft Local Plan Reg. 19 was never available during the entire Consultation period on any of the STC hubs due to a code inputting error. Anyone with no IT access at home was therefore unable to give their response} I had also highlighted that there had also been difficulties with the Habitat Regulations Assessment Link which at the time I acknowledged had been fixed soon afterwards.
Initial responses from STC: Please note the dates: 1) Report in the Shields Gazette report dated 26th March 24 More than 1,800 residents sign petition to save green space in Fellgate from new homes (shieldsgazette.com) ‘Council chiefs said they were aware there was a broken link to one evidence-based document at one stage, however, this was addressed once reported and it was available in two other unaffected places on the website throughout the consultation’. 2) 28th March 24 Response from Senior Planning Manager STC at Stage 1 of Complaint ‘We are not aware that the link to the local plan or the supporting evidence was never available’. 3) 4th May 24 Response from STC at Stage 2 of Complaint: “On 4th March, the Web and Digital Team reported to the planning department that library staff reported access issues over the weekend. This was reported to the Council’s Network Team, who identified a configuration issue with the public computers in the library accessing external sites (the
Have your say website platform is classed as external). IT WAS CONFIRMED THAT THERE WAS NO ACCESS TO THE HAVE YOUR SAY RESPONSE LINK OVER THE CONSULTATION PERIOD FROM LIBRARY COMPUTERS”. The ENTIRITY of the consultation period between 15th Jan 24 and 3rd March 2024. Funnily enough STC also stated that “South Tyneside Council have conducted a number of public consultations using the ‘Have your say’ consultation portal since 2022 and, to our knowledge, THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THIS ISSUE HAS OCCURRED”. Coincidental that the issue was only raised the DAY AFTER THE CONSULTATION PERIOD ENDED?????
Note the dates: No knowledge of the configuration error on 26th March or 28th March yet they had known about it since 4thMarch. Misleading/Misinformation or were we just unlucky????
The response at Stage 3 today 20th June was as follows {I have reviewed whether any other formal complaints were received where other residents may have been unable to submit their comments on the consultations due to ICT issues, however there were no other formal complaints raised with the Council regarding the links to the consultation, which would indicate there was no systemic failure where residents were unable to submit comments via the alternate routes provided. Due to this I do not feel a further investigation will provide any alternate outcome to your complaint than that already provided}.
I DISAGREE and will continue to state that ‘this then excluded an unknown amount of residents from submitting their responses and therefore the Reg 19 Consultation on the Draft Local Plan was seriously flawed?