Cheshire West & Chester Council (19 018 324)
Category : Planning > Enforcement
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 10 Mar 2020
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: Mr X complains about access to the Council when attempting to appeal against an enforcement notice. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint because there is no significant injustice to Mr X from the Council’s actions.
The complaint
- Mr X complains about access to the Council when attempting to appeal against an enforcement notice.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- 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:
- it is unlikely we would find fault, or
- the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
- the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I have considered the comments of the complainant and the Council and the complainant has had an opportunity to comment on the draft decision.,
What I found
- Mr X says that he has been given one point of contact to communicate with the Council. He has been served with an enforcement notice by the Council and wishes to appeal.
- Information about appealing the notice is on the notice itself and on a Government website. Mr X can appeal against the notice without any need to communicate with the Council. The Planning Inspector can consider if the Council has acted properly if an application for costs is made. I do not consider that any alleged failures by the Council in communicating with Mr X are a cause of injustice as he can appeal without such communication.
- Any complaints about access to personal data are for the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Final decision
- Subject to any further comments from the complainant, I do not intend to investigate this complaint because there is no injustice to him.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman