A high-profile civil trial that saw a local developer take on eight senior public officials and the States Employment Board came to an end yesterday – with the Royal Court now set to rule on explosive claims of “misfeasance in public office”.
Michael John Neville, who alleges he was unfairly targeted and financially ruined by planning officers acting in bad faith, has over the past week sought to convince the Royal Court that officials conspired against him, leading to a wrongful conviction over windows installed in a listed building in 2010, which he successfully appealed three years later.
After closing speeches were delivered by the each sides’ advocates yesterday, the case now rests with the Royal Court, which over the week has heard allegations of a senior official lying under oath, enforcement officers acting with “arrogance” and “outright contempt,” and suggestions that Mr Neville was left to fight against a system “tipped against him”.
All of these are strongly denied, with officials maintaining that they were simply doing their jobs within the law.
Who are the defendants in the case?
First defendant – Keith Bray, former Planning Enforcement Officer
Second defendant – Jerry Bolton, former Planning Enforcement Officer
Third defendant – Andrew Scate, then-chief executive of the Planning and Environment Department
Fourth defendant – Daniel Scaife, former Chef de Police of the Parish of St Helier
Fifth defendant – Advocate Robin Morris, employed as a legal adviser in the Law Officers’ Department
Sixth defendant – Tracey Ingle, employed as head of the Historic Buildings Department at Planning and Environment
Seventh defendant – Peter Le Gresley, former assistant director of the Planning and Environment Department
Eighth defendant – Marion Jones, employed at the Planning and Environment Department
Ninth defendant – the States Employment Board
Mr Neville had a business buying, refurbishing and reselling properties, but claims his clash with Planning led him to lose everything.
He alleges that he was unfairly targeted by planning officers when he was served an enforcement notice, and eventually convicted, for placing uPVC windows on two listed properties he had bought. Unplasticised Polyvinyl Chloride (uPVC) is a low-maintenance building material used as a substitute for painted wood.
Advocate Mike Preston, representing Mr Neville, said the trial was “extremely important to all the parties involved and to the public of Jersey”.
He contrasted Mr Neville, characterised as a small developer who used legal aid to get representation by a lawyer, with States employees who had a wealth of resources available to them.
Among the questions the court will have to consider are whether the officers conspired to serve an enforcement notice that was wrong and whether one officer lied in the Magistrate’s Court.
“The scales were always tipped against him”
The trial had heard how Historic Buildings Officer Tracey Ingle had told the Magistrate’s Court in 2010 that she had not been involved with the properties, despite having having provided the wording of the enforcement notice to Enforcement Officer Keith Bray, the court heard.
“It is clear she did lie… It certainly involved bad faith,” Advocate Preston said.
Mr Neville was at a disadvantage with the department, according to Advocate Preston. He claimed that officers acted with “arrogance” and “outright contempt” towards him.
“The scales of planning balance, as it concerns Mr Neville, were always tipped against him.”
He added: “Mr Neville had the misfortune of getting on the wrong side of the planners for reasons best known to themselves, at a time when we have heard they recruited two enforcement officers, ex-police officers who were untrained [and] poorly led, if at all.”
Then an enforcement officer, Jerry Bolton had been part of a “plan” to resolve a logjam of cases that had been sent to the Law Officers’ Department, the court heard, and this involved taking cases straight to the Centenier. A week before Mr Neville’s Magistrate’s Court trial in 2010, this was changed to requiring cases to be sent to the Law Officers’ Department.
“Mr Neville had the further misfortune that at the material time, there was a new Historic Buildings Officer in town. She was intent on making her mark on Jersey, telling [architect Mike Waddington] ‘things have changed’ with regard to PVC windows since she arrived in March that year.'”
Several other listed buildings had received approval for plastic windows, he said, and Mr Neville had tried to find a compromise with the help of Mr Waddington.
“His experience was that every effort he made to achieve a sensible solution was thrown back at him.
He cited the 2010 inquiry into Reg’s Skips, which found that a lack of written procedures in enforcement – which wasn’t resolved by the time the report was written – was “a systemic weakness of the first order” which left the authors “flabbergasted”.
Planning staff had decided “as a collective” to serve the notice, the advocate argued.
Planning Officer Marion Jones had repeatedly rejected Mr Neville’s applications for a number of properties before rejecting his retrospective application for the Devonshire Place properties.
“She was clearly acting in concert with Ms Ingle at this time,” the advocate said.
When Mr Neville they interviewed Mr Neville, planning enforcement officers Keith Bray and Jerry Bolton were “aggressive” and “obstructive” towards him, Advocate Preston argued.
“Mr Bray would have you believe that he was an amiable ex-copper… but he was not. He’d already decided before interviewing Mr Neville that he was sending him to court.”
He added: “Mr Neville’s case is that Mr Le Gresley [Mr Bray and Mr Bolton’s manager] had it in for him.”
“There must be a burden on Planning to get it right,” he said.
“It cannot be right [that] the onus must fall onto the public, onto the customer.”
That when an erroneous notice has been served, it is up to the customer to rectify the situation, he said, was “extraordinary”.
When Mr Scate sent an email warning some Planning staff that Mr Neville had made a threat, he should have checked the “spurious allegation”, Advocate Preston said.
He argued that Legal Adviser Advocate Morris and Centenier Mr Scaife should have checked the allegations made against Mr Neville before prosecuting him.
“This was not down to some overzealous puritans blinded by antipathy towards plastic”
Advocate Steve Meiklejohn, defending, said his clients all “strongly refute” the allegations.
Advocate Meiklejohn said it was “not in dispute that the department was not perfect” but he highlighted the “high threshold” for misfeasance in public office which he said had not been reached.
A number of the claims were “sensationalised”, he said, such as the text of emails sent between parties.
“This was work colleagues chatting openly and frankly with one another.”
He added that there had been “no spite or that they had any issue with him at all, even if it was accepted there was a view that Mr Neville took on ‘tight sites’.”
Mr Neville had agreed with this at his interview.
There had been “a lawful basis for enforcement and prosecution”, he said, with the installation of the windows without permission “a breach of planning law”.
Mr Neville could have appealed the notice at the time, through a new application, the Royal Court or the States Complaints Board, he said.
“This was not down to some overzealous puritans blinded by antipathy towards plastic,” he said, adding that it was understandable for Mr Neville to be “aggravated” by planning policies.
He denied that enforcement officers acted aggressively towards Mr Neville, and said that emails mentioning him were normal workplace communications.
And during the Magistrate’s Court trial, where Mr Neville represented himself, Legal Adviser Advocate Robin Morris “went out of his way” to help him – for example, with formulating questions.
Advocate Morris had this week told the Royal Court that he would “never, ever act with malice, bias or mala fides”.
He asked why the defendants would have risked their careers and reputations to treat Mr Neville badly.
Commissioner Terence Mowschenson was presiding with Jurats Opfermann and Berry sitting.
The judgment was reserved and is expected to be published at a later date.
