The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about how the Council processed two planning applications received for the same development site on the same day. There is not enough evidence of fault by the Council nor injustice to Mr X to warrant an investigation. We also cannot achieve the outcomes Mr X seeks.
The complaint
Mr X lives near a property where the applicant submitted two different applications for the same site on the same day. The Council registered Application A as a valid application on the day it received it, and registered Application B over two weeks later.
Mr X complains the Council may have delayed its registration of Application B to confuse him and other residents into assuming it superseded Application A, which deterred them from objecting to Application A.
Mr X says he and other residents focused their objections on Application B. Application A did not receive enough objections to be referred to the Council’s planning committee. Mr X says therefore he and other residents lost their opportunity to present their objections against Application A at committee. He wants the Council to pause the planning permission the Council granted to Application A and give him and other residents an opportunity to make their objections against that application.
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; or any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained; or any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement; or we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information from Mr X, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr X suspects the Council delayed processing Application B to confuse him into assuming it superseded Application A. He has provided no evidence of this. The Council says the delay in registering Application B was because of a question about the planning fee payable for the two applications, as there is a discount available when two are submitted together. It says the delay was caused by the time taken to determine the correct discounted fee.
Mr X says he assumed Application A had been superseded by Application B. It was this assumption by him and others, not any Council action or inaction, which led to them not making enough objections to put the application before the committee. If Mr X wanted to confirm the status of the applications, he could have contacted the Council or viewed the details on its online planning site. There is not enough evidence of fault by the Council here to warrant investigation.
The injustice Mr X claims is a loss of opportunity to make objections against Application A at the planning committee. Even if that injustice had been caused by the Council, it is an insufficient personal injustice to Mr X to warrant us investigating. We also cannot now say the committee not deciding Application A had any bearing on the planning outcome. We cannot say that if there had been enough objections to it to trigger its consideration at committee, and Mr X and others had presented their objections, that this would have resulted in any different decision on Application A.
Mr X wants the Council to pause the planning approval given to Application A and allow him and other residents to make their objections. Mr X’s requests would require the Council to revoke that permission and re-run the application process. We cannot order councils to revoke granted permissions. We cannot achieve the outcomes Mr X seeks from his complaint, which is a further reason why we will not investigate.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because: there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council to warrant an investigation; and Mr X’s claimed injustice is not sufficient to justify us investigating; and we cannot achieve the outcomes Mr X seeks.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman