Summary: Mr X complains that the Council gave misleading advice about the planning status of his property which restricted its sale. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint because the injustice is speculative and not the result of the Council’s actions.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains that the Council gave misleading advice about the planning status of his property which restricted its sale.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I have considered the comments of the complainant and the Council and the complainant has had an opportunity to comment on the draft decision.,

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What I found

4. Mr X bought a property which was subject to restrictions contained in a Section 106 agreement attached to the original planning permission. The previous owner (a social landlord) had sold the property to a buyer (prior to Mr X’s purchase) who had bought the freehold of the property. This meant that the previous legal restriction no longer applied.
5. The Council says that it gave advice to Mr X (that the legal restriction applied were he to sell the house) without the information from the social landlord about its sale. The social landlord had failed to provide this information initially. It says that Mr X could have obtained this information from the social landlord himself.
6. The Ombudsman would consider that any information required for the sale of a property is a matter for the vendor’s solicitor to establish, both at the original purchase by Mr X and the subsequent sale. The terms of the previous sale by the social landlord were a matter for Mr X’s solicitor to establish.
7. Further, even if the Council was responsible solely for the misinformation about the legal requirement, the Ombudsman could not establish with confidence that a sale or rental had been lost as a direct consequence. The injustice is too speculative to determine with accuracy.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman