Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s planning records. We do not consider the complainant has suffered sufficient personal injustice to warrant our involvement.

The complaint

1. The complainant, I shall call Mr X, says the Council failed to keep correct statutory planning records. He says this caused him to waste his time and lose trust in the public record.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Mr X complains the dates the Council receives planning documents, listed on the Council’s website, are listed as the publication dates – not the dates the documents are uploaded. He says this skews the public record.
6. The Council says its normal practice is to include the date received when uploading documents to the public file. It also says the public access planning pages are hosted and it cannot change the headings on the site. However, in response to Mr X’s concerns, it agreed to change the date received for documents on a specific file.
7. We will not normally investigate a complaint unless there is good reason to believe that the complainant has suffered significant personal injustice as a direct result of the actions or inactions of the service provider.
8. I understand Mr X says the practice skews the public record. However, he was aware of the particulars of the case he complains about. The Council has corrected this record and I therefore do not consider he has suffered a significant personal injustice.
9. Mr X also says the Council has failed to add details of a high court challenge to an allowed appeal on a planning application. Again, this is Mr X’s planning application and I do not consider he has suffered a significant personal injustice as he is aware of the circumstances of this case.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because the personal injustice he has suffered is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman