Summary: There was no fault in the way the Council carried out a planning enforcement investigation, and it was entitled to decide not to take any action. We have not investigated any of the previous planning enforcement investigations the Council carried out on the same site, because they fall outside the time period set out in our jurisdiction. We have therefore completed our investigation.

The complaint

1. I will refer to the complainant as Mr L.
2. Mr L complains the Council has not taken action to enforce against alleged breaches of planning permission by a business near his home. He says these breaches have had a negative impact on his residential amenity.

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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. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and s34H(1), as amended)
4. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered evidence provided by Mr L and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
6. I also shared a draft copy of this decision with each party for their comments.

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What I found

Planning enforcement

7. Councils can take enforcement action if they find a breach of planning rules. However, councils should not take enforcement action just because there has been a breach of planning control.
8. Planning enforcement is discretionary and formal action should happen only when it would be a proportionate response to the breach. When deciding whether to enforce, councils should consider the likely impact of harm to the public and whether they might grant approval if they were to receive an application for the development or use.
9. As planning enforcement action is discretionary, councils may decide to take informal action or not to act at all. Informal action might include negotiating improvements, seeking an assurance or undertaking, or requesting submission of a planning application so they can formally consider the issues.
10. Government guidance says: “Effective enforcement is important as a means of maintaining public confidence in the planning system. Enforcement action is discretionary, and local planning authorities should act proportionately in responding to suspected breaches of planning control.” (National Planning Policy Framework December 2024, paragraph 60)

Mr L’s complaint

11. What follows is a brief overview of the key points of Mr L’s complaint. It is not intended to provide a detailed chronology or account of his correspondence with the Council on this matter.
12. Mr L lives in a rural area. A short distance away from his home, on the same road, there is a large industrial business premises. The business has been located on the site for several decades, and has a complex planning history as its operations and buildings have grown.
13. Over more recent years the Council has undertaken a series of planning enforcement investigations, after receiving reports the business was not adhering the permission the Council had given it. Mr L was the instigator of most or all of these reports. The Council closed the enforcement case on each occasion after deciding the business was not breaching its planning permission.
14. In 2025 Mr L raised a new planning enforcement complaint with the Council. He alleged the business had increased the size of a storage facility, and created two vehicle parking areas, without planning permission.
15. After investigation, the Council decided the storage facility was ‘as approved’, and therefore not in breach of its planning permission. Of the two vehicle parking areas, the Council noted one was on the site of a building which had been removed, and concluded this use fell “within the normal operations of the lawful use of the site”; and the other, which Mr L had referred to as a “bus depot”, was actually a “parking and turning area”, which had planning permission.
16. The Council acknowledged one irregularity, which was that a condition limiting the working hours in the on-site office had never been discharged. However, the Council questioned the utility of this condition, given the minimal impact of the office on local amenity, and concluded it was not proportionate to pursue this matter further.
17. In April Mr L submitted a stage 1 complaint to the Council. He complained the business had caused a vast increase in the use of the road by large vehicles, which had a significant impact on his residential amenity because of the noise and vibration this caused. He related the recent history of his contact with the Council and other relevant agencies on this matter, and accused the Council of failing to take action to resolve the problems he had reported.
18. Mr L also questioned why the Council did not have separate departments to consider planning applications and to investigate enforcement matters, which he said was “corrupt”. He said there had been various conditions attached to the business’s planning permission which had never been discharged or enforced. Mr L said he wished for the Council’s chief executive officer to take over the investigation.
19. The Council responded in June. It explained and apologised for some confusion arising from correspondence in 2024. The Council said its recent enforcement investigation had not identified any breach of planning permission.
20. The Council also explained a previous investigation had come to a similar conclusion. In that case, Mr L had complained about a storage facility being used for distribution, and because of a breach in the number of daily vehicle movements on the site. The Council said the business’s planning permission did not prevent the storage facility being used for distribution, and nor did it create a limit for the number of vehicle movements on site. It explained it was satisfied there was nothing illegal about the business’s use of the site.
21. Mr L made a stage 2 complaint a few days later. He began by complaining there had been poor and confusing handling of his stage 1 complaint by the Council.
22. Mr L said the local highways authority, Suffolk County Council, had been “horrified” to be told there were “200 Articulated HGVs … 50 coaches and double deckers, circa 1,200 cars, hundreds of vans and mini vans and light lorries” moving on and off the site, when it had “signed off” only 10 movements per day. However, he said the highways authority had said it would only act when the Council “[acted] on enforcing the illegal use of the highway”.
23. Mr L reiterated his view there had been various elements of development at the site without planning permission, and criticised the Council for not taking enforcement action against this. He described the impact on his amenity as “living hell” and asked the Council to remove officers he felt were failing to do their jobs, and to start taking enforcement action.
24. The Council responded in July. It apologised for the delay and confusion in dealing with his stage 1 complaint.
25. The Council explained it had already addressed many of the planning issues Mr L had raised, in its response to a previous complaint from him in 2023. It said it would therefore not revisit these matters. The Council said, since then, Mr L had instigated two further enforcement investigations in 2023 and 2025, but in neither case had it identified any breach of the business’s planning permission.
26. The Council went on to explain there was no limitation on the number of vehicle movements in the planning permission, and so this was not something it could control with its planning powers. The Council noted Mr L had requested a meeting with senior officers in his complaint, but it declined this, because it had never identified any breach of planning permission, despite multiple investigations.
27. The Council also explained it had separate teams for dealing with planning applications and enforcement matters, although they were part of the same department. The Council said this was a common arrangement in local authorities in England.
28. The Council upheld the complaint insofar as it concerned the complaint handling, but did not uphold it with regard to the substantive planning matters.
29. Mr L then referred his complaint to the Ombudsman.

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Analysis

30. I will first explain the restriction on the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction with respect to time.
31. As I have explained, the law says a person should approach us within 12 months of becoming aware of the issue they wish to complain about. This is called the ‘permitted period’. A complaint that falls outside the permitted period is late, and we will not generally accept it for investigation.
32. In this case, Mr L’s complaint raises several matters which he had evidently been aware of for longer than 12 months at the point he made his complaint. Over a period of years the Council undertook a series of enforcement investigations at Mr L’s instigation, and as these pre-date July 2024 (12 months before Mr L’s complaint to the Ombudsman), they are late, some by a very considerable margin. In fact, only one of the Council’s enforcement investigations, that which I describe at paragraphs 13-15, is in time.
33. I should note Mr L initially approached us with this complaint in September 2024. However, he did not provide evidence he had made a formal complaint to the Council yet, and did not respond to our request for more information at that time, only returning to us in July 2025 after completing the Council’s complaint process. For this reason I do not consider it reasonable to take September 2024 as the actual date of Mr L’s complaint to us.
34. The law does permit us some flexibility in the application of the time restriction, and we can exercise discretion not to apply it, if we consider there is a good reason for a person’s delay in approaching us. But Mr L made a previous complaint to us in August 2023, which was also premature because he had not yet complained to the Council. This demonstrates Mr L was capable of bringing his complaint to us sooner, and so I do not consider there is any reason to exercise discretion in this case.
35. My investigation will therefore be limited to the Council’s enforcement investigation in 2025.
36. The Ombudsman’s role is to review the way a council has made its decisions. We may criticise a council if, for example, it has not followed an appropriate procedure, not considered relevant information, or unduly delayed making a decision. We call this ‘administrative fault’ and, where we find it, we can consider the impact of the fault and ask the council in question to address this.
37. However, we do not make operational or policy decisions on a council’s behalf, or provide a right of appeal against its decisions. If we find a council has acted without fault, then we cannot criticise it, even if the complainant feels it has made the wrong decision. We do not uphold a complaint simply because a person disagrees with something a council has done.
38. When it receives a report of a breach of planning permission, a local planning authority should take steps to gather evidence about it, to allow it to make an informed decision whether there is a breach. If so, it should then decide whether is proportionate to take enforcement action against the breach.
39. The 2025 enforcement investigation covered three points – the alleged expansion of a storage facility, and the creation of two parking areas, one of which Mr L described as a ‘bus depot’. Having investigated, the Council concluded the storage facility remained as approved by the planning permission. The first parking area was on the site of a building which had been removed, and was therefore did not represent a change of use; and the second was actually a turning area, for which the business had planning permission. The Council therefore determined that none of these matters was a breach of planning permission.
40. During its investigation, the Council did establish there was an outstanding condition, concerning the operating hours of an office building on site, which it had never discharged. But, given the minimal impact the office had on local amenity, the Council decided it was not proportionate to pursue this.
41. There is nothing to suggest any administrative fault in the way the Council arrived at these decisions, and it was therefore entitled to make them. This is not, in any way, to dismiss Mr L’s disagreement with the Council’s decisions. But what remains here is simply a difference of opinion, and this does not give me any grounds to uphold Mr L’s complaint, even accepting his evident strength of feeling on the matter.
42. I am conscious the single most prominent point Mr L has raised is what he believes to be the unauthorised, and vast, increase in the number of vehicle movements to and from the site. He says the business was given planning permission in 2015 for 10 movements per day – in other words, five vehicles, each arriving and leaving once – but there are in fact approximately 200 movements by HGVs alone. He complains this creates a significant noise and vibration impact on his property.
43. However, the Council says the business’s planning permission places no such limit on vehicle movements, and so it has no power to control this. Although, as I have said, there is an extensive planning history to the site, I have reviewed the available records of decisions the Council made in 2015, and I can see nothing which introduces any limit on vehicle movements.
44. Either way, this alleged breach, and the fact the Council had not taken action against it, formed the basis of Mr L’s previous complaint to the Ombudsman in 2023. This being so, I am satisfied it is also late, and that we should not consider it any further.
45. I note the Council partially upheld Mr L’s complaint, due to some confusion and delay surrounding its complaint handling. I do not consider this is significant enough to justify a finding of fault though, because the Council has apologised for it, and it is not a point Mr L raised in his Ombudsman complaint form.

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Decision

46. I find no fault.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman