Summary: We will not investigate this complaint that the Council has failed to adequately respond to the complainant’s concerns about a window at a neighbouring property. It is reasonable to expect the complainant to have contacted us sooner and, in any case, the claimed injustice does not directly flow from the alleged fault.

The complaint

1. X complains the Council has failed to adequately respond to his complaint about overlooking from a first-floor side window at a neighbouring property.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
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. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
4. We can investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has directly 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. So, we do not start an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any fault has not directly caused injustice to the person who complained.

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

5. And it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered:
• information provided by X and the Council, which included their correspondence.
• information about the planning application and enforcement history of the site, as available on the Council’s and the Planning Inspectorate’s websites.
• online street-view images of the two properties.
• the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

7. The 12-month time restriction detailed above appears to apply to X’s complaint. This is because permission for the window (as part of the wider planning permission for the residential development) was granted in late-2021, and the window is apparent in online images of the built properties in June 2023. X purchased the neighbouring property in August 2024, yet he did not contact the Ombudsman until March 2026. On balance, I see no good reasons why X could not have contacted us sooner if he had concerns about the window and why the Council had allowed it, so we will not exercise discretion to investigate this matter now.
8. And even if this time restriction did not apply, the principle of “caveat emptor” is relevant here. This translates as “let the buyer beware”, and places responsibility on the buyer and their solicitor to carry out all necessary due diligence/checks before deciding to proceed with a purchase. As such, the Ombudsman would not investigate the complaint because the claimed injustice does not directly flow from the alleged fault. Rather, it stems from X’s decision to purchase the neighbouring property in August 2024, when permission for the window had already been granted in 2021 and it had been installed since mid-2023.
9. As we are not investigating the substantive, underlying issues being complained about, it would not be a good use of our resources to pursue any concerns about the Council’s associated complaint handling in isolation.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate X’s complaint because it is reasonable to expect the complainant to have contacted us sooner and, in any case, the claimed injustice does not directly flow from the alleged fault.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman