The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s handling of the complainant’s planning application and subsequent complaint. It is reasonable to expect the complainant to have contacted us sooner and to have used her right of appeal to the Planning Inspector, and we will not investigate the associated complaint process in isolation.
The complaint
Miss X complains about the handling of her planning application. In particular, she says there was poor communication and lack of guidance from the case officer, resulting in delay in the application being determined. She says the Council’s handling of her subsequent complaint was also equally unsatisfactory.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
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) The law also says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone can appeal to a government minister. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to appeal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(b), as amended) The Planning Inspector acts on behalf of the responsible Government minister. The Planning Inspector can consider appeals about delay – usually over eight weeks – by an authority in deciding an application for planning permission.
And, it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.
How I considered this complaint
I considered: information provided by Miss X and the Council, which included their complaint correspondence.
information about Miss X’s planning application, as available on the Council’s website.
the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The 12-month time restriction appears to apply to Miss X’s complaint. This is because the planning application was approved in July 2024, with the Council signposting her to the Ombudsman at the end of its complaints process in February 2025. Yet Miss X did not contact us until November 2025. I appreciate there was some delay in the complaints process, and she continued to seek answers from the Council after receiving its final complaint response. But the Ombudsman would normally expect to have received her complaint by July 2025 (12 months after the decision on her application) and, on balance, I am not persuaded there are sufficient grounds to exercise discretion to investigate this late complaint now.
And even if this time restriction did not apply to the complaint, Miss X could have appealed to the Planning Inspector for non-determination if she was unhappy with how long the Council was taking to decide her application. I consider it would have been reasonable for Miss X to have used the right of appeal put in place by Parliament to remedy this kind of situation. The Ombudsman will not usually investigate when someone has a right to appeal to the Planning Inspector, even if the appeal would not provide a complete remedy for all the injustice claimed.
As we are not investigating the substantive matter being complained about (the handling of the planning application), it would not be a good use of our resources to look at Miss X’s concerns about the subsequent complaint process in isolation.
Final decision
We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because: the complaint is late, and it is reasonable to expect her to have contacted us sooner.
it is reasonable to expect her to have used her right of appeal to the Planning Inspector.
it is not a good use of our resources to look at the Council’s complaint process in isolation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman