Easington District Council (07C06505 + 2 others)

Planning applications and Building control   Maladministration causing injustice

12 December 2008

Easington District Council’s handling of a new countryside development caused a woman to suffer nuisance from traffic. The Ombudsman said the Council “failed to consider an effective way of protecting [the complainant] from the impact of traffic” and was critical of its decision to accept demolition of barns without requiring a new planning application.

‘Miss S’ (not her real name for legal reasons) lived in the countryside in a former farmhouse. The Council gave planning permission to a developer to convert barns close to the farmhouse into three dwellings. The Council’s planning policy was to allow such conversions if the original buildings were structurally sound and the bulk of the original external fabric would remain.

The Council’s planning officers said that the impact on Miss S of traffic to and from the three dwellings would be a reason to refuse planning permission. They recommended that this could be overcome by a new access road. Planning permission was granted on the condition that a new road should be approved and built before work began to convert the barns.

Structural problems were found with the barns after work had begun. A planning officer visited the site and wrote to the developer saying ‘…any demolition and rebuild would invalidate the planning permission…’ He went on to say that the Council would ‘…sanction a degree of demolition and rebuild in order to allow the proposed development to proceed...’ The planning officer also sent the developer a marked plan showing what he believed had been agreed. The plan was ambiguous and there was no other record of the meeting.

The planning condition requiring a new access road did not fulfil the Council’s intention of protecting Miss S from being disturbed by traffic to the three dwellings. It did not stop people from using the old access and could not prevent people who had rights to use the original road from doing so. The developer had such rights and insisted on using them for construction traffic. Fortuitously, as part of a further planning permission affecting the site the Council was able to impose a condition requiring all access to the three dwellings to be from the new road.

The Ombudsman found maladministration by the Council because:

• it decided to accept extensive demolition of the barns and new building without requiring a new planning application that it would have dealt with in accordance with its policies; and
• it failed to implement its intention to prevent traffic from using the original access and passing close to Miss S’s home effectively.

As a result of the Council’s maladministration Miss S was deprived of an opportunity to object to planning permission being given for a development that was contrary to the Council’s policy, and was subject to noise and other disturbance, principally from construction traffic.

Remedy

The Ombudsman noted that the Council appeared to have found a way of restricting traffic and recommended that it should pay Miss S £500 in recognition of that disturbance and her time and trouble in pursuing her complaint.

LGO satisfied with Council's response: 2 April 2009

Date Updated: 10/12/09