COUNCIL OFFICIAL SAID:  "MOVE YOUR HOME AND WE'LL SAVE YOUR STABLES"

February 26th 1997 - THEY LIED, OVER & OVER SO IT APPEARS

Having already been tricked into moving their home by planning, legal and enforcement officers (David Phillips, Ian Kay, Ashley Brown, Vic Scarpa).  Mick and Valerie Punter watched in horror as the stables bought with their life savings was smashed by a ten strong team of workmen using pickaxes and bulldozers.

They were though entitled to have a mobile home of site and entitled to continue with the use of the former farm building for stabling - as the appeal conducted by a volunteer member of the public, Nelson Kruschandl, proved with the help of witness testimony from many concerned animal welfare entities such as Brown Bread, and a local pig farmer, Anne Harris.

Council officers led by Wealden's chief enforcement officer (David Phillips at the time), lied to Wealden's planning south committee when they advised the members the stables breached planning rules. Phillips' was practiced in the art of deception. He and Ian Kay were experts in taking issues out of context and misquoting them to committee in such a way as to paint a distorted picture, in this case to get area plans south to give him authority to engage a wrecking crew. It should have been obvious to any council that a horse rescue operation in this location was necessary. Not only that, but the good works of Mr and Mrs Punter should have been praised, rather than denigrated. What are Wealden like?

The stables were a permitted development in agricultural terms and acknowledged as such by the Council in writing.  All the Punters needed was a change of a planning condition.  However, the officers failed to mention this to Mick or Val or their committee when asking for authorisation to enforce. The real reasons behind such arrogant and draconian abuses of authority appear to stem from the previous owner, a builder, and the fact that the present occupiers were previously Landlords at a local public house where there had been some minor planning issues.

SCOUTS CAMP - We should mention that the animal sanctuary at Bushy Wood is not connected in any way with the Scouts camp adjacent, who have completely separate facilities and equipment.

It is also a fact that if anyone has the audacity to challenge a council official, they then make it their business to give the person raising queries a hard time. They make these members of public a target, and they involve as many agencies as they can to apply pressure. There is a system of asking other agencies to write letters to absorb their victim's time - in the hope of distracting them from the case the council are pursuing. Such abused of power should be outlawed.

Indeed, all the couple had to do was walk the animals out of the agricultural buildings and into the field (cold and damp) and Wealden could then not touch the buildings. But, the couple could not bear to see the less well animals in their care suffer from the weather. Some of the horses were rescue animals that were old or sick.

Wealden District Council lied to the Sussex Police who provided officers at the scene of the demolition, when in fact those officers should have been questioning the legality of the hasty demolition to be sure they were not aiding and abetting a crime in progress.

We know now that Wealden had a special arrangement with Sussex Police, effectively granting the officers immunity from prosecution. It is alleged that this is to do with Ian Kay and his father in law who was a Master Mason at the Tyrian Lodge in South Street, Eastbourne. This Lodge is just around the corner from the (old) police station in Grove Road. For this reason it was very popular with police officers who were members, and that is where cozy relationships appear to have developed.

CONSPIRACY - Just like in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, there are workers in councils who are there only for the money they need to survive. They are forced to work as a team even if they do not like what is going on, and whistle blowing is very difficult, because you will be sacked and need to fight a long legal battle that you may end up losing against constructive dismissal, or something similar.

As you can see from the correspondence trail, Rex Pettigrew was working for Ashley J Brown and Ian Kay, with Victorio Scarpa and David Phillips. P Bradshaw is also involved with Mrs L Aylmore being the team clerk to this Gestapo like council.

The above letter tells the then owners of Bushy Wood animal sanctuary that Wealden will march in with the bulldozers and demolish the buildings, remove the caravan and charge the owners for the demolition which could then be a charge on the land. We are sure that areas plans south would have enjoyed throwing their weight about using your tax dollars. Presumably, David Phillips got a kick out of the illegal raid as some kind of perverse power mania. He has never challenged the views on this site, not tried to justify his actions in any way. He shows no remorse and neither did any councillor who authorised the so-called "DIRECT ACTION" that Ashley Brown and the legal team at Wealden were pushing for.

HASTY DEMOLITION

The demolition was hasty because the underhanded officers wanted them gone so that the planning committee could no longer consider the valid planning application - and subsequent appeal.

It was only the fact that Mr Chester Hudson drove all the way to Bristol, to be able to lodge an appeal on behalf of the Punters, that this matter had a somewhat more happy ending. Mick and Val Punter were not in any mental or physical condition to fend for themselves after their ordeal.

Enforcement (if that was appropriate) should have taken the form of an injunction. This would have left the stables to be used for their permitted agricultural purposes and given the Punters a chance for a fair hearing.  However, the council knew injunctive proceedings would fail when any Court saw what was going on.  Wealden District Council are not renowned for giving people a fair hearing.  So demolish it was!

As a reader, you may not quite believe that council employees can be so callous. But the facts speak for themselves. Some civil servants given positions of trust are every bit as dangerous as the infamous Adolf Hitler - and yes, eugenics policies (commonly called discrimination) are alive and well in Sussex. It was the English who invented concentration camps. A little known fact.

Article 8 of the Human Rights Act prohibits interference such as this by a local authority.  This Council's actions were not only unreasonable and unlawful, but also malicious - at which point they became illegal. The reason the Conservatives want to get rid of our Human Rights Act is to strip the man in the street of this very much needed legislation.

Of this atrocity, Valerie Chidson said is was only a small mistake.

Concerning the later service of documents, this was Vic Scarpa's abuse of a position of trust, that finally got the attention of the Secretary of State as a practice to be stamped on. The appellants in this case were awarded costs against the underhanded tactics of Scarpa and Phillips that were designed to disadvantage Mr and Mrs Punter.

How might a council as perverse as this comply with climate change reductions in greenhouse gases?

APPLICATION FOR RETENTION - This letter confirms receipt of the planning application that Ian Kay and David Phillips were to try and undermine in demolishing the stable blocks before the planning committee could determine the application. It was touch and go with an appeal being lodged at the last minute by Wealden Action Group member, Chester Hudson. Mr Hudson had to drive all the way to Bristol to hand deliver the appeal to be sure that the Inspectorate would accept that it had been lodged in time. 6 months was the limit for appeals against refusal or non-determination.

Any way you look at it this was a particularly evil effort on the part of a conspiratorial core of cold-hearted officers. We reckon they would have been well suited to running a concentration camp where they could torture inmates and get away with it. 

REPORTED CORRUPTION - It is well known that in other countries it will be necessary to bribe officials to gain permits. This sort of thing goes on in Merry England, with payments often being in kind to avoid suspicion on the part of Her Majesty's Inland Revenue. A good example is where a developer builds an extension for a planning officer as a favour for a favour. The other favourite is the brown envelope stuffed with cash.

ENFORCEMENT NOTICES - Following the New Forest District Council v Ken Duffy case of 2001, if you are issued with a notice requiring you to demolish buildings and break up and excavate foundations, you might find such a requirement to be excessive and a violation of your Article 8 right to peaceful enjoyment of your home, free of interference by the state.

For the full story to this picture why not visit the Sussex Express website: www.lewestoday.co.uk 

FLUSHED WITH SUCCESS - We imagine that Wealden would have been overjoyed in duping the High Court into making an Order that demanded removal of toilet facilities from their long-term adversary's home, condemning him to defecate in the old fashioned way - and remarkable is it not how well an animal can adapt and build from sheer determination until it is time to reveal the truth and his gleaming new urinals. The building has toilets re-fitted of course thanks to Dame Butler-Sloss and the occupiers rejoice with each pull of the handle, at the resourcefulness of this underdog when the chips were down. The frivolity at Wealden's offices was short lived when the Health & Safety Executive chimed in to spend a penny or two. From that point on Wealden have been bogged down with the publication of what they had done - and permanent skidmarks in the underpants of their hall of shame. No amount of toilet tissue can ever wipe the brown from this council's back passages.

CHESTER HUDSON - If it had not been for the sterling efforts of Chester Hudson, the demolition of these stables would have gone unnoticed by the public.

BARBARA FLYNN - Wealden's first port of call was to argue that the appeal would be invalid. The planning officers asked the council's legal department to for an opinion as to the legality of the appeal, given that they had destroyed the subject buildings in an effort to thwart any resistance.

TRANSPARENCY - The need for transparency in any council dealings is clear when cases like this are involved. Councils routinely try to prevent the identity of their officers from being revealed to protect the corrupt planners and executives from being caught and prosecuted. Accountability is key to effective administration. In this case the council should have admitted their mistake early on. Advised Mrs and Mrs Punter as to a resolution and simply accepted a change of condition. But then, the power crazed Ian Kay, Doug Moss and the rest of the wrecking crew would not have had their day out. Talking of which, we understand that some officers enjoyed a vacation at the public expense.

J D Moss was one of the officers involved in taking pictures, then lying about their return, when in fact copies had been passed to David Phillips who then used them with an incorrect date attribute to try and gain an injunction against the volunteer advocate in this case. Ian Kay had a special cupboard for dodgy cases. Many of the staff at Wealden knew about his 'Special Cupboard.'

AREA PLANS SOUTH - Councillors Roy Martin, D Abel, Nick Ellwood and E Powell were all involved in the conspiracy to demolish the stables at Bushy Wood. When you vote for a councillor, it might be an idea to pick a candidate with some moral backbone. These councillors had the power to stop the unlawful demolition but backed the corrupt officers all the way to the finishing post. Councillor are paid from the public purse to attend these meetings. Officers are paid civil servants, supposed to be trusted to ensure that no member of the public suffers loss. See Section 4 of the Fraud Act 2006. The conclusion must be that the councillors are as corruptible as the officers.

DEMOLITION COSTS - Parsons and Dearley of the council's treasury department also applied pressure to Mr and Mrs Punter in the form of a demand for costs amounting to £2,875. 86 pounds. They demanded payment by return to avoid additional recovery proceedings. Our advice is to spend monies on a high quality defence and win your case. Do not give in to council bullies.

The council knew that the owners of the site did not have the money to hire solicitors and they knew that seeking monies for the demolition prior to the inquiry would have been wrong. The objective was to cause extreme pressure to be applied to their victims, contrary to Article 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Thugs like this, operating at the expense of taxpayers across the land, must be identified. Think of the carbon footprint for a moment. The owners of the site had to rebuild the demolished stables, the council spent an absolute fortune in man and office hours seeking to defend the indefensible. Umpteen vehicles were used in the demolition involving several police officers in attendance. And all of that was wasted effort on the part of the council. Politics and policies need to change to become more efficient. This council is an example of waste at its worst. They are climate criminals. These cases and these policies are directly responsible for global warming.

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WHAT A WASTE OF EVERYONE'S TIME AND MONEY