Despite Erewash Borough Council having worked alongside Rayden Engineering to submit a retrospective planning application for the unauthorised development which had already taken place, the first application was submitted as incorrect and returned. Five months later a "correct" application finally entered the planning process. No site Notices was displayed and nothing was published under Public Notices to advertise the planning application giving the legal owner of the land an opportunity to come forward.

The retrospective planning application was refused in March 2007, but it was not until the end of 2007 that we discovered this application had been submitted and had gone through the whole planning process to Appeal stage based on false, inaccurate and misleading documents. Documents that EBC had KNOWN to be inaccurate in January 2007, documents without which the application would not have been determined let alone survived to Appeal stage.

In an attempt to create the illusion of overcrowding, hence the need for more storage space, Rayden Engineering started taking deliveries of additional equipment to store. Then took to stacking the equipment high enough to ensure maximum visual impact.

Rayden Engineering also started working next to the unauthorised security fencing....

...barely three metres from our gardens, with noise levels of 135 decibels, dust, fumes and bonfires...

from 5.30am..

...until 10.30pm...

Bank Holidays inclusive where the residents would be goaded, provoked and taunted with heavy plant or haulage driving from one end of the unauthorised fencing to the other and back again.

The police became regular visitors to our home following numerous calls made by Rayden Engineering and the majority of calls receiving an instant response. A multitude of allegations followed, ranging from attempting to shoot the company owner several times, criminal damage, trespass and numerous house to house inquiries in a vain search for evidence to support non-existent crimes.

After 17 visits including an ambush visit by the Rapid Response Firearms Unit and a midnight arrest, complete with mobile cell and police escort to be handcuffed and transported to Ripley, strip-searched, photographed, DNA tested, fingerprinted and interviewed at midnight - WHY? To investigate an allegation made 46 days earlier of criminal damage to a £10 pipe, an official complaint of police harassment was made. The perpetrator of these allegations has now turned police attention to a  neighbour in his sixties. His crimes to warrant being threatened with arrest? Shining a torch and twiddling a piece of string!!

RAYDEN ENGINEERING FROM BAD TO WORSE...