Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to carry out planning and licensing enforcement against a nearby garage business since 2014. Some of these matters are late and we will not exercise discretion to consider them now. Other matters are subject to ongoing investigation by the Council and we will not prejudice the outcome of those investigations.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained about the Council’s failure to take action over the past 14 years against a garage business operating as a scrap storage and recycling. He says that failures by the licensing and planning authorities have caused financial loss to his development of an adjacent site which he obtained planning approval for in 2024.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.

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

3. 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. The more time passes between the events and a complaint, the more unlikely it is we can investigate them effectively, gather reliable evidence and reach a sound decision. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council’s responses.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Mr X says the Council failed to identify a false use declaration by a neighbouring garage business in 2014 which has resulted in subsequent failures to take action against planning and licensing breaches since then. He says the adjacent land for which he obtained planning approval in 2024 is affected by the use of the site for scrap without a licence since 2017.
7. We will not investigate the issues raised by Mr X which relate to matters more than 12 months prior to when he complained to us. If he was concerned about use of the site when he submitted his planning application he could have raised the issue with the Council and us at the time before submitting his application. The Council says his planning agents specifically dismissed any concerns about the neighbouring land in 2024 when approval was being sought.
8. The time for receiving complaints is from when someone became aware of the matter they wished to complain about, not when they complained to the Council or it issued its final response. We would expect someone to complain to us within a year, even if they were dissatisfied with the time the complaints procedure was taking.
9. Mr X made a formal complaint to the Council in 2025 about the use of the site and past failures. The Council says that the monitoring and investigation of the site is ongoing and that following legal advice it is investigating the storage of scrap on the site for potential licence breaches. At the time Mr X made his complaint it had found no evidence of breaches which would warrant enforcement action.
10. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, regardless of whether someone disagrees with the decision the organisation made.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to carry out planning and licensing enforcement against a nearby garage business since 2014. Some of these matters are late and we will not exercise discretion to consider them now. Other matters are subject to ongoing investigation by the Council and we will not prejudice the outcome of those investigations.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman