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Local developer registers Code of Conduct complaint against Councillor Terry Parish over defamation

Councillor Terry Parish, new West Norfolk Council Head, has had a complaint registered against him by local parish member Nigel Marsh

In a meeting about a planning application on my property, one councillor, Terry Parish, decided to make some choice comments. However, this wasn’t a comment on the application, it was instead an attack on me and my character.

During a planning hearing for a point of entry, Councillor Parish saw fit to slander me and my business, and to this day he has largely gotten away with it!

Councillor Terry Parish’s comments against me had nothing to do with the Planning Application. He objected to the planning application and used slander to manipulate the hearing and convince other councillors to side with him against me! With this, he managed to obtain conditions that the borough council and the highway authority both recommended against. 

Condition: build a wall to stop campers from accessing the campsite

One of Councilor Parish’s proposed conditions was to build a wall to stop campers from getting to the campsite, a concept reminiscent of the Cold War and the building of the Iron Curtain! 

This condition let me use the entry point, but only for the holiday lets and not the campsite it runs past, making it impossible to operate my business here. It would have required me to build a wall between the entrance and the campsite to prevent access between the two, making certain areas of the site entirely impossible to access!

Tell me where in this picture I could possibly build a wall to stop access to the campsite!?

Condition: The historic entry point can not be used for farming and campsite

Our site on July 30th, 1953, with the point of entry highlighted

On top of an unreasonable condition to make large areas of my site effectively useless, the council also proposed a condition whereby only holiday let guests could use an entry point! Not only would this condition have been nearly impossible to enforce, but it also entirely ignores the fact that this access point has been accepted since at least 1953 when it was pictured in use as an entrance point for the caravan and campsite which was operating at the time. Regardless of that, the planning hearing still sketched a plan to get it approved!!!!

Councillor Parish manipulates reasons to add conditions

I believe the slander of both my personality and my business influenced the decision-making of the planning process.

The planning process should be objective decisions made to ensure sustainable economic development, a better environment, and improved local infrastructure. Not only is this an attack against me, but it flies in the face of the expected process of council and democracy as a whole!

At this stage, Terry Parish was only a parish councillor, and as a parish councillor or councillor of a borough council there is a code of conduct he should abide by - here are the important highlighted parts relevant to it.

Now, his conduct has wound up making Terry Parish the centre of attention in an article by the Eastern Daily Press; he wasn’t head of the council for long but he certainly caused trouble!

My submission to the monitoring officer of councillors expected me to pull up the councillor, guide them on misgiving, and guide them on how to communicate with the public or, indeed, communicate with anybody. My complaint was clear, I was complaining against slander, libel, unprofessional behaviour, and defamation. The evidence I submitted showed this video with Terry Parish going on to say various things, including:

  • Calling me a "rogue developer" that is “causing multiple problems to this and other planning authorities"
  • Saying that I’m “known to ignore or abuse planning rules” and that they should find a way to get me to "close the campsite permanently”
  • Calling my site a "joke" and an “illegal campsite”
  • Saying that the site is “usually full of cars and campervans and God knows what else that shouldn’t be there.”

Watch the video on the right to see the planning meeting and hear councillor Parish's comments, as well as my reaction to them.

With this allegation and this evidence, it is clear to any person on the Clapham Omnibus that I, Nigel Marsh, was quoted by Councillor Terry Parish as a “rogue developer”. 

There is no evidence that this is factual, nor is there evidence that this is someone else's opinion that Parish was relaying on behalf of someone else; this can only be his view, and as such it's clear slander. Similarly, the minutes of multiple Council meetings from April 2022 to January 2023 refer to my campsite in a libellous manner as an "illegal campsite"

You can read the email I sent off personally on May 9th to complain about Parish's conduct on the right here.

This is just one of many times my site is unfairly referred to as an "illegal campsite" in Council Minutes.

You can read the full Minutes for April 2022, July 2022, August 2022, December 2022, and January 2023

A complaint ignored

Of course, I submitted a complaint on Councillor Parish's misconduct, looking to get him to retract his slanderous statements and get an apology for the defamation of my character in a public meeting where he had no reason nor grounds to attack me and my campsite since neither of these was under discussion. The point of the planning meeting was to discuss an entry point for holiday lets, and Mr Parish turned it into a soapbox on me and my other, unrelated businesses in order to further his own agenda.

You can read the full complaint on the right.

So, how did the council respond to this valid summation of Terry's comments and complaint against the character assassination levied against me by the councillor?

They dismissed it, of course!

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The council looked at my complaint and instead of, again, focusing on the details of my complaint and responding to them, they instead shot off in different directions, justifying why Councillor Parish saw fit to defame me publically instead of perhaps reviewing the language he used and whether he should treat members of the parish like that.

Councillor Parish also uses a number of resolved cases to justify me as a rogue developer. I ask you, how do multiple examples of me fixing things at the request of the council make me a rogue developer?

And then, there's the assessment of the "independent person":

"Whilst the language used is less than perfect, considering the history of Mr Marsh’s noncompliance with regulatory matters, it is of little surprise that individuals at the council have expressed their views in this way – they are only human!"

Yes, they are only human, but they are also councillors! If a cashier snapped and berated you for being unreasonable, would you accept their manager coming along and saying "They are only human"? If someone started kicking off at an officer of the law for an unfair arrest, would they avoid charges because "They are only human"? In a court of law, would someone speaking their mind avoid contempt of court because "They are only human"? Why are the local authorities held to a lower standard of responsibility than the constituents they claim to represent? Aren't they meant to be level-headed officials making objective, reasonable decisions?

At the very least, Councillor Parish needs re-training and to retract his statements. The management officer suggests that if I want to take it further I should appoint a solicitor. However, Councillor Parish represents the council and is the head of the West Norfolk District Council. As such, it's not just a councillor that's gone out of line: this councillor's comments are comments representing the council, and either the council has allowed this language to be used or encourages this language to be used. 

As such, I have now complained to the LGA. The LGA, or Local Government Association, are an external monitoring system for local govt to be pulled up when their representatives act outside the code of conduct that they should follow.

Of course, it is entirely possible that Councillor Parish will hide behind "Qualified Privilege", something that allows Councillors to make slanderous statements in the interest of being able to "speak their minds freely" as Lord Denning stated in 1975. But this just leads back to the point: Why are councillors allowed freedoms and protection from defaming others that their constituents don't get? 

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The Secretary of State’s Planning Inspectorate has scathing review of West Norfolk's planning practice for mYminiBreak.

However, all was not lost. Following a review by the planning inspectorate, these conditions were overturned, and my plans were allowed to go ahead. A report from an Inspector appointed by the Secretary of State laid out their reasoning for this decision, which categorically reflected my arguments and sided with me wholly on the matter.

In the report, the Inspector of the Secretary of State writes:

Clearly, the Planning Inspectorate saw as well as I did that there was no legitimate reason to block this access based on this application. But, that wasn’t all, as they later stated:

So, there it is! The Planning Inspectorate appointed by the Secretary of State says that the use of the land is entirely unrelated to the focus of this planning application. I, of course, went to great pains to try and tell the council this, only for it to fall on deaf ears and myself to be branded as a “rogue developer”, a slanderous statement that the council upheld, citing my alleged “noncompliance” as the reason for letting blatant defamation stand in a council setting.

Well, the Planning Inspectorate certainly doesn’t think I’m not complying, and if that’s the case, what grounds do the council have to allow this slander?

You can read The Planning Inspectorate's full report here to see just how supportive they are of like-minded business owners!

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With the Planning Inspectorate’s opinion that the council acted inappropriately and confirmation that I acted fully lawfully, I will be submitting a new complaint with a view of putting it in front of the ombudsman if the complaint is ignored, or the council advise that an elected member of the West Norfolk Council representing the council can slander an individual in this manner!