The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s handling of his neighbour’s planning application. This is because the complaint is late, the decision does not cause Mr X significant injustice and we cannot achieve the outcome Mr X wants.
The complaint
The complainant, Mr X, complains about the Council’s handling of his neighbour’s planning application. He says the Council failed to properly consider the impact of the proposal on his property and wants the Council to revoke the planning permission granted.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start an investigation if the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended) The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate. 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 Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The Council granted planning permission for the proposal several years before Mr X complained about the matter to us; his complaint is therefore late.
While we have discretion to investigate late complaints I have seen no good reasons to exercise our discretion in this case. The Council provided a final response to the issue in July 2021 which referred Mr X to us but he did not bring the matter to us until late April 2022. We therefore consider it would have been reasonable for Mr X to complain sooner.
In addition to this Mr X’s neighbour has more recently applied for planning permission to amend the original proposal and the Council has reconsidered the development as a whole as part of the application. The Council has granted permission for the amended proposal and it appears the neighbour has decided to implement this planning permission rather than continuing with the original. We could not therefore say the original decision caused Mr X significant injustice and we cannot say the Council must revoke the planning permission as Mr X wants.
Mr X confirms he intends to complain about the Council’s more recent decision but should bear in mind our time limit if he chooses to do so; it is unlikely we would investigate any complaint about the Council’s handling of the application unless Mr X brings the complaint to us within 12 months of the decision.
Final decision
We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the complaint is late and we cannot achieve the outcome Mr X wants. We also could not say the Council’s decision causes Mr X significant injustice.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman