Council takes pair to court over striped beach hut-style trailer

Several commenters above are, quite rightly, asking “Why?”.

The sad truth is that public bodies all across England are wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers money annually on denial, cover-ups, and giving a flat ‘No’ to citizen’s legitimate challenges!

With the NHS, the MoD, HM Treasury, and DWP probably being the worst offenders, when measured by the total number of disputes? Possibly also the Cabinet Office, given its propensity to assign fake names to public-facing staff?

And why? This widespread obfuscation, including downright deceit (such as lying by omission, and concealing records) is ostensibly ‘To limit reputational damagel’ and/or ‘To avoid a loss of public confidence in the organisation’.

In reality, from cases where a citizen has found sufficient resources (financial and emotional) to challenge a disputed action to an ultimate conclusion, the background seems more often than not to have been that someone in the public body made a mistake, which the body didn’t want to admit to (principally trying to avoid ’embarrassment!).

Closely related to the above scenario is that the public body had acted (more often had failed to act!) in full accordance with provisions ‘democratically’ voted for by our Parliament – too often with the passive(?) connivance of the relevant Secretary of State!

So how to clean-up this inexcusable Wild-West situation, in which the health and emotional well-being of hundreds of thousands of honest citizens, looking only for honesty and the whole truth, is deliberately being damaged – with the additional waste of millions of public money by the bodies concerned on ‘legal expenses’ in attempts to defend the indefensible?

Ideally the first action of a sensible Government will be to bring back free Legal Aid, for challenges to public bodies, for every citizen with a taxable income not exceeding £150k pa?

This will bring several benefits, such as re-invigorating a legal profession where far too many bright young graduates find that, instead of applying their significant intellectual ability to work at developing a fairer society for all of us, to just make a reasonable living by parking their noble ideals in order to assist ‘Big Business’ to avoid tax, and to avoid every other obligation that reduces the enterprise’s profits to its owner/shareholders!

Related to the above is the clear need for Gov’t to beef-up the SRA (Solicitors Regulation Authority) with sufficient,funding to require it to investigate every case where papers have been filed with a Court or a Tribunal relating to any form of dispute between a public body and a natural person/citizen.

The initial purpose being to investigate the extent to which a solicitor acting for the public body has acted more in the perceived interests of the public body than in those of their professional obligation to act ‘In the best overall interests of society in general’).

In many disputes the duty of such a solicitor will have been to advise management that amrrasonable settlement needs to be negotiated with the citizen challenger. Frequently this will involve conceding a complaint, but on the basis of ‘No liability and ‘No precent’. And any potential abuse of a public body body appearing to be ‘generous’ is easily countered by watching for the occasional repeat claim from a previoud challenger, and then examining that claim with very great rigour!

So the best lawyers working for the public sectorm are those that reach amicable settlements of challenges. But as such issues will often include an NDA there will be no public-domain record of such successes, as there can be with the published outcomes of Court and Tribunal proceedings. so no boost to the egos of over-aggressive lawyers!

Which is why the SRA needs powers (and funding!) to discipline such over-aggressive public-body lawyers – almost always by a fine taken from the lawyer’s salary (so not from any insuurance policy
funded by us taxpayers!), with the potential for temporary or permanent withdrawal of the solicitor’s Certificate to Practise.

And until the above improvements can be achieved most citizens will be well-advised to join whichever Trade Union seems to offer the broadest legal insurance to its members, in return for a subscription of perhaps less than £5 pw. And homeowners with household insurance would do well to look for policies which seem to offer the best add-on of insurance for legal expenses.

To state the blummin’ obvious: feeling powerless to challenge a perceived injustice is really negative for the health and well-being of an aggrieved person – and all the more so when the injustice emanates from a public body which should be observing the very highest standards of ethical integrity, surely?

So now back to Lower Rock Gardens. The initial administrative failure, which our City Council appears unwilling to own up to, is that, in granting a licence for the cross-over, from the carriageway into the front garden, no condition was imposed to restrict use to only private cars, and two- or three-wheelers, none of them being used to display advertising nor for any other trade purpose (so no vans or taxis etc)?

In the present circumstances it looks as though BHCC should tolerate the wheeled hut as being a ‘Work of Art’ (which cannot legally be slept in overnight, nor be used to trade from)?

In time its creators/owners will either remove it voluntarily, or it might fall into such disrepair that the Council can then use powers, other than Planning ones, to require its removal?

So let’s hope that one or more elected Councillors will intervene, without delay, to end this wasteful bullying by BHCC?

And ideally to negotiate an ex-gratia payment to the hut’s owners for the distress and effort which has resulted from the needless bullying by BHCC officers (with those bullying actions to date apparently not having been decided on by a majority vote of any of our Councillors in any formal open committee meeting?).
SNAFU, yet again?