Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about how the Council dealt with planning enforcement matters at a property close to his home. The Ombudsman does not consider that Mr X has suffered enough personal injustice to warrant his involvement.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains there was a lack of control exhibited by the Council over unplanned works carried out between May and August 2019 at a neighbouring property. He says there was:
• inadequate monitoring of developments
• inadequate consultation with other council departments
• inadequate investigation of the options available
• inadequate consideration of safeguarding issues
• inadequate management of remedial measure and:
• inadequate protection of protected trees.
2. He says he suffered stress because the Council displayed no control over an unplanned development, He suffered from disruption because of working outside permitted house and some protected trees have been lost. Mr X says he has lost confidence in the Council.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:

• the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained
• the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement
• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A (6), as amended)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

4. I considered the information provided by Mr X and discussed his complaint with him. I also considered the Council’s responses to his complaint and Mr X’s comments on the draft version of this decision.

Back to top

What I found

5. Mr X told the Council that unauthorised work was taking place at the property behind his home.
6. The Council visited the site and established the work required planning permission. It issued a temporary stop notice.
7. The site owner provided a geotechnical report to the Council. The Council considered the content. I says it also had regard to the author’s professional and confirmation of his technical knowledge from another authority. It decided to lift the stop notice to allow the work specified in the report to be completed. It says this was to protect the owners from physical harm and danger to life.
8. The Council has visited the site several times to inspect the work. It says the Health and Safety Executive has also visited the site and given advice to the site owner and the contractor carrying out the work.
9. The Council confirms that trees subject to preservation orders were removed. But it says there is not enough evidence of a reckless or wilful act aimed solely at the destruction of the trees, to prosecute the owners.

Assessment

10. During a conversation with Mr X, he confirmed his concerns were about the loss of protected trees, loss of wildlife habitat impact from the excavation activity, danger to the public, risk to other properties and a lack of holistic consideration which would have been given to a planning application.
11. While we aim to help people where we can, and it is appropriate to do so, the Ombudsman cannot investigate every complaint he receives. The law places restrictions on our work and we operate with limited resources.
12. We will not normally investigate a complaint unless there is good reason to believe that the complainant has suffered significant personal injustice as a direct result of the actions or inactions of the service provider. This means that we will normally only investigate a complaint where the complainant has suffered serious loss, harm, or distress as a direct result of faults or failures by the service provider.
13. Mr X has confirmed he has not suffered any damage to his property and none of his trees have been removed. I understand he has found the situation very stressful, but I consider this, and his other concerns, have arisen because of the actions of his neighbour in carrying out dangerous, unauthorised work, rather than because of the Council’s actions.

Final decision

14. I will not investigate this complaint. This is because I do not consider that Mr X has suffered enough injustice as a direct result of the Council’s actions to warrant our involvement.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman