SPSO Individual Decisions

Mr and Mrs C complained about the games area in a new community campus beside their home. They were unhappy about light spillage from the floodlighting for the games area into their garden. In particular, they complained about the council's failure to take enforcement action on a planning condition about light spillage from the community campus. The planning condition for the campus said that there should be no light spillage beyond the boundaries of the site to the satisfaction of the planning authority. We were satisfied from the evidence we saw that light spillage from the games area had occurred. Planning authorities have a general discretion to take enforcement action against any breach of planning control if they consider such action appropriate. We did not consider that the council had taken satisfactory steps to mitigate the effects of the floodlighting and to address Mr and Mrs C’s complaints about this matter. Although the light levels in Mr and Mrs C’s garden had been measured, this was done by staff from the facilities management group contracted by the council to manage and run the facility, and not by council staff. Our planning adviser commented that the use of terms such as ‘to the satisfaction of the planning authority’ had been discouraged in the Scottish Government Planning Circular 4/1998 – ‘The Use of Conditions in Planning Permissions’. Mr and Mrs C were also unhappy that the council had failed to take action in response to their complaints about antisocial behaviour by users of the games area. The Centre Manager confirmed that Mr C had contacted him about this eight to ten times during two months in 2010. We found that the council had taken action to try to prevent balls going into their garden and had put up signs asking customers to mind their language. However, the Centre Manager also stated that he did not have a record of each time Mr and Mrs C made a complaint. It was clear that management staff at the campus did not adequately record th

Mrs C's neighbour notified Mrs C that he was applying for planning consent for dormer extensions. He assured her that no window was planned for the elevation facing her property. Mrs C checked the council's online planning portal and found that that was the case, so she did not object. The council's case officer then suggested changes to the submitted scheme, including a window in that elevation. However, his delegated report was not amended and the changed plans were not assessed, and Mrs C only became aware of the change when construction started. She complained that the plans had changed without anyone telling her; that there had been a delay in placing the amended applications on the council website; and that the council had been inconsistent in the handling of this application compared with the treatment of another nearby application. We upheld her complaints about the changes and placement of the amended application online, as the amended plans were not readily available and this meant that Mrs C did not know about the new window before construction started. We did not uphold the third complaint as we did not find inconsistency of treatment.

Mr C made a number of complaints about the council's handling of planning applications for an agricultural shed and house close to his home. We found that the council failed to follow their standard procedure that they do not display responses from internal consultees on their website until after an application is determined. Due to an internal error, the website displayed the response from the roads officer, but did not initially display responses from the environmental health manager. We upheld this complaint. However, we did not uphold a number of other complaints Mr C made about the handling of the applications and about the council's investigation into the points that he raised about this, as we generally found their actions to be reasonable. We did, however, make recommendations where relevant.