The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s decision to discharge a planning condition. We have not seen enough evidence of fault in the Council’s actions.
The complaint
The complainant, I shall call Mr X, says the Council’s flood risk assessment on a planning application has been completed wrongly and there could be potential flooding risks. He said the Council has recorded the soil as mainly clay, but Mr X believes this is wrong. He wants to know the reasoning for the Council logging the wrong soil type.
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 there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the Mr X and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The Council agrees the description of ‘predominately clay soils’ is not an accurate description of soil type. However, it has explained it considered information from: The British Geological Society (BGS) The National Soil Map of England and Wales with host data and description; and Soilscapes from Cranfield University It also says it considered the BGS classification for the underlying geology is “Gretna Til Formation-Diamection” which it believes is close to class 18 in the hydrology of soil types (HOST 18).
The Council has therefore explained how it assessed the soil type and arrived at its decision to discharge the planning condition.
It is clear Mr X disagrees, but the Ombudsman is not an expert, and it is not for us to impose our view on the Council when it has relied on the professional judgement of its Officers when coming to a decision.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is no evidence of fault in how the Council arrived at its decision to discharge the planning condition.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman