The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s handling of her neighbour’s planning application. This is because the Council considered Mrs X’s concerns about the potential for overlooking and there is not enough evidence of fault in the way it reached its decision.
The complaint
The complainant, Mrs X, complains the Council was wrong to grant planning permission for her neighbour’s extension as it will overlook her bedroom windows. She wants the Council to pay her compensation for the impact of the development on her privacy.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by Mrs X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
We are not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong.
I appreciate Mrs X disagrees with the Council’s decision to grant planning permission for her neighbour’s development but I have seen no basis for us to question it. While Mrs X says the Council should have carried out a site visit and discussed her concerns with her sooner, there was no requirement for it to do so.
The planning officer’s report shows the Council considered the potential for overlooking to Mrs X’s property but felt this was not sufficiently harmful to warrant refusal and this view is shared by other senior officers who investigated Mrs X’s complaint.
Had the planning officer felt they needed more information they could have requested it and if they felt a visit to the site would have been useful they could have carried one out. The fact they did not request further information or visit the site shows they felt the information they had was sufficient to determine the application and it is not for us to criticise their judgement on this point.
Final decision
We will not investigate this complaint. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman