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London Borough of Merton (05B09611 + 2 others)

Planning enforcement                Maladministration causing injustice

12 June 2007

The complaint

Three residents complained about the Council’s handling of a planning application to convert a large public house and beer garden near their homes to residential accommodation and build new properties to the rear. The development was in a conservation area.

What happened

When development work started, the residents informed the Council that it did not appear to comply with the planning consent. It was some time before the Council accepted that there were significant differences between the built and the approved schemes.

The Council sought a planning application from the developer so that it could give proper consideration to the development as built. It did not, however, pursue this with sufficient vigour and the development was allowed to progress during the period of delay from August 2005 until December 2005, when an application for the development of the land was received. In April 2006 a separate application for the conversion of the public house itself was received. By this time some of the flats were occupied and their use was causing disturbance, particularly from the use of a metal staircase that had been installed on the wall adjoining one of the complainants’ homes without planning consent. The Council’s environmental health department was informed of the disturbance and in June 2006 an abatement notice was issued. The environmental health department also recommended refusal of the planning application for the conversion of the public house because the staircase was unacceptable.

The application for the conversion of the public house was refused in February 2007, after the parallel application had been refused at appeal.

The Ombudsman’s view

The Ombudsman said:

“It seems to me that the Council did not have a clear strategy in this case and failed to act robustly for several months when no accurate revised plans were forthcoming.”

He was also critical of the Council for the way it dealt with and responded to the complainants, for example, providing inaccurate responses and claiming not to have received letters that were hand-delivered to the Council’s offices.

Outcome

At the time that the report was published the unauthorised development was still in place. To resolve the complaint the Ombudsman recommended that the Council should:

  • review the way the enforcement team dealt with breaches of planning control within a conservation area;
  • apologise to the complainants for the prolonged uncertainty about what would eventually be approved on the land adjacent to their home;
  • review the complaint-handling systems within the planning department;
  • pursue enforcement action at the site as soon as possible;
  • pay £1,000 to one complainant for the six months when she was affected by the statutory nuisance caused by the metal staircase;
  • pay £500 to the second complainant to reflect the additional time he had been living with the statutory nuisance caused by the metal staircase; and
  • pay a further £500 to the second complainant and £250 to each of the other complainants to recognise their time and trouble in pursuing their justified complaints with the council and with the Ombudsman.

Date Updated: 13/01/09