The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to take enforcement action against Ms X’s neighbour’s extension. This is because we are unlikely to find evidence of fault by the Council sufficient to warrant an investigation.
The complaint
The complainant, who I refer to as Ms X, says the Council did not respond to her complaints about her neighbour’s extension within a reasonable time and has failed to take action to remove the extension.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
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 Ms X and the Council, including its response to her complaint.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Ms X contacted the Council about a planning enforcement matter concerning work that had taken place at her next-door neighbour’s property. She subsequently made a complaint about its response stating it was wrong to say the work she had complained about had taken place in 2017 and that its response contained many inaccuracies. She did not elaborate further on what these inaccuracies were despite being invited to do so.
The Council responded to Ms X’s complaint under the two stages of its complaints procedure. It explained that because it had evidence that four years had passed since the work had taken place, it was immune from formal enforcement action. It said that even if it had not been immune, it was likely the Council would not have taken action because the work was viewed as permitted development, and so did not require planning permission, and because it was of a similar appearance to other examples in the street.
The Council did acknowledge that it had not dealt well with the enforcement case because there had been an exceptionally long delay to bring closure to it and it apologised for this.
The restriction highlighted at paragraph 3 applies to any issues Ms X was aware of longer than 12 months before she complained about them to the Ombudsman. As we would reasonably have expected her to have complained to us sooner, they fall outside our jurisdiction.
We will not investigate the most recent matters Ms X has raised because the Council considered the case and decided it was too late now to take action and even if it was not, there were no grounds to warrant such action.
While the Council’s delay in bringing closure to the enforcement case is noted, this is not a matter we will investigate in isolation when we are not investigating the substantive issue.
Ms X has referred to Party Wall issues, but these are civil matters with which the Council is not involved.
Final decision
We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because we are unlikely to find evidence of fault by the Council sufficient to warrant an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman