Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s planning enforcement and complaints processes. There is not enough significant personal injustice to Mr X from the core enforcement matter to warrant investigation. We do not investigate councils’ communications and complaint-handling in isolation from the core matter which gave rise to the complaint. We cannot achieve the outcomes Mr X seeks from his complaint.

The complaint

1. Mr X lives several houses away from a property where development took place to the rear. He reported the matter to the Council as unauthorised in 2022. Mr X complains the Council:
1. committed a gross breach of its enforcement policy;
2. failed in its administration of the matter and its communications with him.
2. Mr X says he spent a lot of unnecessary time chasing the Council, over more than a year. He wants the Council to change its administrative procedures to ensure:
• email auto-responses are set up to acknowledge receipt;
• proper hand-off between the complaints and enforcement departments;
• emails are replied to within the timeframes set by Council policy;
• policy is reflected in reality, in particular, that there is timely notification of case reference numbers, acting officers and their replacements, and case updates.

Mr X also wants the Council to follow its existing enforcement policy, or change it to reflect its current capabilities, and for the Council to be guided on how to arrange, administer and execute its procedures.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide:

• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information from Mr X, the Council’s Enforcement Plan document, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. The core matter in this complaint is the enforcement issue. The enforcement case was the reason why Mr X first contacted the Council in August 2022.
6. The Council decided the enforcement matter in May 2023. Officers decided not to take enforcement action. Mr X does not dispute the Council’s enforcement decision in his complaint. He does not say the development he reported, which is several addresses away, was affecting him or his own property.
7. Even if there has been fault in the Council’s enforcement decision, we will not investigate. There is insufficient significant personal injustice to Mr X caused by the outcome of the core enforcement matter to warrant an investigation. We recognise Mr X may be annoyed that someone has done unauthorised works to the property and the Council has decided not to take action. But such annoyance would not be sufficient personal injustice to justify us investigating. Someone else’s good fortune is not a significant injustice to Mr X.
8. Mr X’s complaint to us is primarily about the way the Council dealt with his report and his subsequent complaint, and its administration of both. We recognise these have become the largest aspects of Mr X’s complaint, rather than the enforcement matter which started his contact with the Council. But they are secondary issues, triggered only by the core enforcement issue. The Council accepts it did not follow the terms of its own enforcement plan when dealing with Mr X’s report and this was fault. Officers have apologised for this. We do not investigate councils’ correspondence and complaint-handling in isolation where we are not investigating the core issue which gave rise to the correspondence and complaint. It is not a good use of our resources, which come from public funds, for us to do so. That limitation applies here so we will not investigate these parts of Mr X’s complaint.
9. Mr X wants various changes to the Council’s administrative processes. He also wants the Council to be given guidance on how it arranges and delivers its enforcement procedures. The Council has provided information to Mr X on how it is rearranging its processes in future. It is for councils to decided how they arrange their services and where they focus their resources. It is not the role of a complaint-handling body such as ours to give councils guidance on rearranging their administration or funding. Nor do we have powers to order councils to make such changes. That we cannot achieve the outcomes Mr X wants from his complaint is a further reason why we will not investigate.
10. Mr X mentions he made another enforcement report to the Council in September 2023 about a different property in his road. This is a new issue, requiring Council action and another decision, which has not formed any part of Mr X’s earlier Council complaint. We cannot investigate or intervene in this ongoing matter. Once the enforcement process has ended, if Mr X is dissatisfied with the Council’s actions, he may wish to complain to its officers. We would not be able to investigate until the Council’s internal complaint process has been exhausted or we consider it has had the appropriate time and opportunity to deal with the complaint. Were we to receive a new complaint from Mr X on this new enforcement matter, we would apply the tests required by our remit. This would include a consideration of whether this new enforcement issue caused him sufficient significant injustice which would warrant us investigating.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because:
• there is insufficient significant personal injustice to him from the core planning enforcement issue and its outcome to justify us investigating; and
• we do not investigate councils’ correspondence and complaint-handling where we are not investigating the core issue giving rise to the complaint; and
• we cannot achieve the outcomes he seeks from the complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman