Complaints about the publicity given to a planning application

This fact sheet is aimed primarily at people who believe that the council has failed to advise them of a planning application that may affect them and may be considering making a complaint to the Ombudsman.

The council did not tell me about a planning application. Can the Ombudsman help me?

• Yes, in some circumstances. If you believe that the council failed to tell you about a planning application and you were not able to object then you can complain to us. 
• But we are unlikely to uphold your complaint if it turns out that the council followed the proper procedures, relevant legislation and guidance on the publicity of applications; or if you were not directly affected by the development. 
• If you find out about a planning application and want to object, you should ask the council if you still have time to make an objection. If there is still time, you need to write to the council as soon as possible giving your reasons why you think the application should not be approved.
• If the council tells you that the consultation period on the application has finished, you may be able to ask a councillor to contact council officers on your behalf about your concerns.
• The Ombudsman cannot normally consider a complaint about an application until a decision has been made. This is because, even if a council has done something wrong, we do not know until that point whether the fault will affect the outcome. 

How do I complain? 

• You should normally complain to the council first. Councils often have more than one stage in their complaints procedure and you will usually have to complete all stages before we will look at your complaint.
• Then, if you are unhappy with the outcome, or the council is taking too long to look into the matter – we think 12 weeks is reasonable – you can complain to us. 
• You should normally make your complaint to us within 12 months of realising that the council has done something wrong.
• To complain to the Ombudsman phone our helpline on 0300 061 0614 (8.30am to 5.00pm, Mondays to Fridays). You will be able to discuss your complaint with one of our advisers. You can text us on 0762 480 3014.
• You can complete an online complaint form

If you can consider my complaint what will the Ombudsman look for? 

We look at whether someone lost the chance to object in writing, or speak at a committee, because the council failed to publicise an application properly. We will also consider whether a development would still have been approved, or if a planning permission might have been given with different conditions, if someone had made an objection. Depending on the council's procedures and the law, some faults we might find are that the council:

• did not send you a notification letter; 
• did not put up a site notice, or only put a notice in a place where few people would see it;
• wrongly described the development or gave inaccurate or misleading information about the application in its letters and site notices (for example ‘two storey’ instead of ‘three storey’);
• did not consult with other bodies when it should have done (for example, English Heritage, for listed buildings or English Nature, for wildlife conservation); 
• failed to place a press advertisement (for some major schemes or development affecting conservation areas and listed buildings); or
• did not consult you on amended plans, where these increased the impact of the development on you.

What happens if the Ombudsman finds that the council was at fault? 

It depends on the fault and what the consequences have been for you. We cannot force the council to overturn the planning decision or remove the development. But:

• If other people put objections that were considered and were similar to the one you would have made if you had known about the application, we may ask the council to give you an apology. 
• If you were likely to be directly affected by a development, but there did not appear to be fault in how the application and your likely concerns were considered, we may ask the council to make you a payment of up to £250 for your outrage in not being told about the proposal at the outset. 
• If there was no fault in the handling of the application otherwise, but you were potentially directly affected and lost the chance to speak at a committee, we may recommend that the council should make you a payment of £250-£500 for a lost opportunity to have your say. 
• If your objection might have led to a better outcome and you have been left not knowing if this might have been the case, we may ask the council to make a larger payment of £500-£1,000 for your outrage, lost opportunity and uncertainty. 
• If you were directly affected and your objection would probably have led to a better outcome, we may ask the council to arrange for a ‘before and after’ valuation of your home and pay you any difference between the valuations; pay for measures to reduce the impact of the development; or take other steps, such as asking the developer if he is willing to make changes to the permitted scheme, if not yet built.

We may also ask for compensation for the time, trouble or expense you were put to in pursuing your complaint.

If we find fault with the council’s procedures, we will often recommend that the council introduces changes so that the same problem does not occur again in the future.

Examples of some complaints we have considered

Other sources of information

• For advice on a range of planning topics go to www.planningportal.gov.uk
• See the Gov.uk website: www.gov.uk/government/topics/planning-and-building

Our fact sheets give some general information about the most common type of complaints we receive but they cannot cover every situation. If you are not sure whether we can look into your complaint, please phone 0300 061 0614.

Date Updated: 27/03/13