Vale of Glamorgan Council

Email dialogue evidence: every email exchanged with Vale of Glamorgan Council about Great House Farm is catalogued word for word, by thread and date, at Vale of Glamorgan Council — Email Correspondence Catalogue (continued in Part 2 and Part 3). Messages with no reply are retained in the same catalogue so that silence is itself evidence.

Assessment cut-off: 17 October 2026. This page is the forensic assessment for the current unitary authority. It is distinct from the separate Llandough Community Council — Forensic Assessment. Use the Institutional Involvement Roadmap (1877–2026) for the date-ordered sequence across all institutions.

Forensic Assessment — Vale of Glamorgan Council

Scope: the Council as (1) local planning authority holding the post-1988 development file for Great House Farm / Church View Close (including 89/01396/OUT and 92/00671/RES); (2) FOI/EIR controller for its own records; (3) Registration Service; (4) Democratic and Scrutiny services; (5) Monitoring Officer / Head of Legal and Democratic Services; (6) ward representation. Private title merits remain for courts and HM Land Registry; the Council is not asked to determine who owned Parcel A.

Live accountability workstreams (status at 17 October 2026)

Registration Service

28 September 2026: Hayley Jefferies (Registration Service) requested place and date of death for Mary Doreen (Nancy) Williams, formerly Buckler. Family supplied images and the wiki link the same day. 30 September 2026: Registration Service stated the record is not held in the Vale and had been referred to Cardiff colleagues. No further Vale Registration Service reply appears in the Gmail set after that referral.

Democratic / Scrutiny

10 October 2026: formal Scrutiny Topic Suggestion / Task and Finish request concerning Council-held planning, heritage and public-authority records for Great House Farm / Tŷ Mawr. 11 October 2026: James Langridge-Thomas (Democratic Services) declined “on this occasion”. 16 October 2026: family replied noting continued interest and asking when the work programme would next allow consideration. No further Democratic Services reply is present by the cut-off.

Monitoring Officer / DPO / Complaints

28 September 2026: formal concern, preservation notice and subject-access request addressed to the Monitoring Officer (and Head of Legal and Democratic Services), DPO@valeofglamorgan.gov.uk and complaints@valeofglamorgan.gov.uk. No reply from any of those three addresses appears in the scanned Gmail set by 17 October 2026.

Ward councillor

28 September and 5 October 2026: correspondence with Cllr Christopher P Franks. Reply limited to personal acknowledgement and a prayer note. No substantive records, process or planning engagement is recorded.

Planning file gaps (recurrent)

Repeated requests for the ownership certificates that underpinned 89/01396/OUT, for appendices B–E of the 1989 planning officer’s report, for the condition 16–18 discharge chain, and for the 1994 Cotswold Archaeology / counsel’s-opinion material have produced only partial disclosure. Appendices C, D and E remain missing and are the subject of the 10 October 2026 formal chase under 00211557 and earlier references.

Forensic control tests

• FOI/EIR controller: for every open request, record the statutory clock, the exact request wording, any clarification, the internal-review trigger date, and every chase. Silence after the internal-review request is itself a recordable event.
• Planning authority: identify the decision-maker, the ownership certificate relied upon, the representations received, the conditions imposed, the discharge evidence, and any missing appendices. The Council is not asked to re-decide private title; it is asked to produce the documents it holds or held.
• Registration Service: record the search performed, the negative result, and the onward referral. A negative search is useful only when the search parameters are stated.
• Democratic / Scrutiny: record the topic proposed, the reason for decline, and any stated future opportunity.
• Monitoring Officer: record the date of the formal concern / SAR / preservation notice and the absence or presence of any acknowledgment or substantive reply.

Current finding

As at 17 October 2026 the material reviewed does not establish Council-wide wrongdoing. Specific acts and omissions must be assessed individually. The outstanding internal review of 00210772, the still-missing planning appendices C–E, and the absence of any reply to the 28 September Monitoring Officer formal concern are the principal live accountability points. Partial disclosure on the planning file is not treated as full compliance.

Items with no substantive reply (or no reply) by cut-off

1. Internal review of FOI/EIR 00210772 (requested 7 July 2026; still open after repeated statutory chases through 16 October 2026).
2. Monitoring Officer formal concern, preservation notice and subject-access request (28 September 2026) — no acknowledgment or reply located.
3. Full production of planning appendices C, D and E of the 1989 officer’s report / related material.
4. Any reasoned written response to the ownership-certificate / assumed-title point first raised with Planning in the 31 January 2026 letter (Thread 2 of the catalogue).
5. Substantive ward-councillor engagement beyond personal acknowledgement.
6. Democratic Services reply to the 16 October 2026 note of continued interest after the 11 October decline.

Human action

Continue the scheduled chases on 00210772 until a substantive internal-review outcome or a clear refusal is received. Re-press the missing appendices under the live FOI/EIR references. Record any future Monitoring Officer reply (or continued silence) against the 28 September formal concern. Keep the scrutiny topic on the record so that a later Task-and-Finish window can be claimed. Obtain the ownership certificates and condition-discharge file once produced.

Acceptance: each live FOI/EIR reference has a named decision, documentary basis, statutory deadline status and remedy/status entry; every message (including those that received no reply) remains visible in the email correspondence catalogue; the ignored-items list is updated when a reply arrives or when a new statutory clock expires.

Institutional appearance timeline — linked source index

Coverage rule: chronological navigation of published Wiki source pages and catalogue threads that name Vale of Glamorgan Council. Every label links to the page or thread containing the source. The list records appearance, not culpability. Dates are taken from the source title or the email date-stamp.

Records-access register appearances

Rows that match the institution’s name or an alias in the FOI & Public-Authority Reply Register. A match establishes appearance in the records trail.

Related navigation: FOI & Public-Authority Reply Register · Records Access Chronology · Evidence Library · Institutional Assessment Coverage Register

Cross-reference — Cedwyn Estate working theory: The broader Cedwyn Estate / repeated parcel-capture theory asks whether council records help explain the history of the 1970 VG41 register and later land dealings. The original map, ownership section, application, notices and decision are required before the Council’s role can be characterised; custodian or registrar status is not itself proof of freehold ownership or wrongdoing. See the Cedwyn Estate Working Theory.