Local Government Ombudsman

> | Accessiblity Options | Text Only | Text Size: A+ A- Reset | Links | Site Map

You are here: Home : : Complaint outcomes : : Planning : : Planning archive 2009-10 : : Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council (07C14968 and one other)

Quality and efficiency

Browser support

Browse aloud

Click here for speech assisted browser support

Downloads

Site tools

Files with this symbol pdf icon are in .pdf format. To view these files you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. It can be downloaded below free of charge. Click To Download

adobe acrobat reader

Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council (07C14968 and one other)

Planning applications                 Maladministration causing injustice

9 February 2010

There were “serious flaws” in the way Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council approved a plan to demolish a listed Victorian schoolroom and build new houses on the site. The Ombudsman said: “If the Planning Sub-Committee had been properly advised and directed to the proper considerations for these applications, I believe that it would not have approved the applications.”

In response to complaints from residents, the Ombudsman found serious errors and omissions in the report and presentation to the Council’s Planning Sub-Committee that granted the permissions. The applicants had argued that demolishing the schoolroom and selling the site with planning permission would ‘enable’ the associated distinctive, listed Chapel to be repaired and refurbished. The Planning Officer accepted this without applying any of the tests required by English Heritage for such ‘enabling’ development and the Sub-Committee were not told of:

  • the law requiring them to have special regard to preserving the listed Schoolroom;
  • national planning guidance that there should be a general presumption in favour of preserving listed buildings;
  • the specific tests that they should have applied before giving permission for the Schoolroom to be demolished; and
  • relevant comments from the Council’s own conservation specialists.

Thirty-two photographs were shown to the Sub-Committee to illustrate the dilapidated condition of the Schoolroom – 24 of them were of a completely different building.

The Ombudsman said: The failure to give clear, comprehensible professional views and assessments of the two applications was maladministration.”

She concluded that the Council’s maladministration caused injustice to the people who complained. The injustice was the potential loss of part of their area’s built heritage that contributes to the setting of the distinctive, listed Chapel and the general character of the conservation area.

Remedy

The Ombudsman recommended that the Council should remedy this injustice by seeking to negotiate for the permissions to be relinquished in favour of a new scheme, for which it will meet reasonable design costs and planning application fees. In the event that negotiations fail the Council should consider revoking the permissions after considering a full report on all the relevant issues.

Date Published: 11/02/10