The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s decision to grant planning permission for a development near his home. This is because Mr X has not been caused an injustice.
The complaint
Mr X complains the Council has granted planning permission for a development near his home that will result in unacceptable levels of noise.
Mr X says the Council failed to consider comments from local people about the application and the noise from the activities at the development cause him significant distress.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
The Ombudsman investigates complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6)) We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and information about the development on the Council’s website.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr X is separated from the development by a railway track, a row of houses and a residential street. The Council has carried out noise monitoring on Mr X’s street which included times when the development was in use. The Council found no evidence to suggest that the use of the development would result in unacceptable noise levels at that location. Therefore Mr X has not been caused an injustice as a result of the Council’s decision to grant planning permission for use of the development and so we will not investigate this complaint.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because Mr X has not been caused an injustice as a result of the Council’s decision to grant planning permission for the development.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman