Summary: There was no fault by the Council in the way it considered a planning enforcement matter. The Council was entitled to give the developer more time to comply, despite the expiry of an initial notice period, and to revise which enforcement matters it would pursue. We have therefore completed our investigation.

The complaint

1. I will refer to the complainant as Mrs J.
2. Mrs J complains the Council has not taken effective action to enforce against breaches of planning permission in the redevelopment of a neighbouring property. She says these breaches have a significant negative impact on her privacy, and considers the Council should ensure the developer removes the elements for which they do not have planning permission.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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 34H(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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What I have and have not investigated

5. In her complaint to the Ombudsman, which she made in April 2025, Mrs J has referred to incidents going back to May 2023, and says she has suffered “nearly 2 years” of stress over these matters.
6. The law says a person should approach the Ombudsman within 12 months of becoming aware of the matter they wish to complain about. This is called the ‘permitted period’. Any complaint made outside the permitted period is late, and we will not generally investigate it.
7. We are permitted by law to apply some flexibility to this restriction, where we consider it appropriate, but we must first be satisfied there is a good reason for the complainant’s delay in making their complaint. I have seen nothing to suggest Mrs J could not have made her complaint earlier though, and so, applying the law strictly, my investigation will not consider anything that happened before April 2024, although I will refer to earlier events for context where necessary.
8. Since making her complaint, Mrs J has raised new concerns about the Council’s decision on a new planning application relating to the same site, and what she considers to be impropriety by the Council’s planning committee. These are new matters which did not form part of her complaint to the Council, and so I cannot consider them as part of this investigation.
9. For the avoidance of doubt therefore, this means my investigation will only cover events from the period April 2024 to April 2025.

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How I considered this complaint

10. I considered evidence provided by Mrs J and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
11. I also shared a draft copy of this decision with each party for their comments.

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What I found

Planning enforcement

12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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)

Mrs J’s complaint

16. The following chronology will give an overview of the key events relevant to Mrs J’s complaint. It is not exhaustive and is not intended to describe everything that happened.
17. In 2021 a developer sought and gained planning permission from the Council to renovate and expand the property next to Mrs J’s home. Development proceeded, but the developer made changes to the size and layout of the property, going some way beyond what the Council had permitted. As a result of this, in May 2023, the Council opened a planning enforcement investigation.
18. In January 2024, the developer submitted a new planning application, to regularise the changes they had made to the approved plans. In March, the Council refused this application. This was because the developer had not included in the new plans all changes they had made, and because some of the changes had an unacceptable impact on Mrs J’s residential amenity.
19. In April, the developer submitted another planning application, but did not include all required information, meaning the Council could not validate (formally accept) it.
20. In June, the Council visited the site and served a breach of condition notice (BCN) on the developer. This gave the developer until October to address the breaches and return the site to what the Council had approved.
21. In October, Mrs J contacted the Council. She expressed concern the compliance date on the BCN was shortly due to expire, but with no sign yet the developer was actually complying. The Council explained it would not immediately prosecute the developer simply because the compliance date had expired, but would explore its options when the time came.
22. In December the Council came to an agreement with the developer. The developer would first address the elements of the development the Council considered unacceptable, due to their impact on residential amenity, and had a five-month deadline to complete this work. The developer would then submit a new retrospective planning application for the remainder of the unpermitted development. The Council wrote to Mrs J to explain this.
23. In January Mrs J submitted a stage 1 complaint to the Council. She complained the Council had now decided to allow the developer more time to comply with the BCN, and said the remedial work it was requiring them to complete did not address all the unacceptable aspects. Mrs J said she had wanted the Council to visit her home to understand the impact of the unpermitted development, and that she believed the Council should be taking enforcement action to ensure the developer complied with the original permission.
24. In response, the Council explained it was required to prioritise enforcement cases which represented possible public harm. It said it had undertaken “significant enforcement action” in this case, and that it had already visited the site three times. The Council said its service of a BCN was evidence of how seriously it took Mrs J’s concerns, but reiterated it did not automatically follow that it would prosecute a developer for failing to comply.
25. The Council went to explain it did not consider all aspects of the unpermitted work to be harmful. It said the BCN remained in place and the option to prosecute the developer was still open, if the Council remained dissatisfied.
26. Mrs J submitted a stage 2 complaint in February. She said she had originally raised her concerns with the Council in 2023, but the development remained non-compliant two years on, and that she believed the Council should be acting more robustly.
27. Mrs J complained the Council had not given any clarity on likely timescales for enforcement, or how it would determine whether to take enforcement action. She also complained the BCN had stated that failure to comply “would result in immediate prosecution”, but this had not happened. Mrs J reiterated that she felt the Council’s new agreement with the developer did not properly address the harmful aspects of the development.
28. The Council responded in April. It explained it would only take immediate formal enforcement action “in the most severe, and most harmful cases”. It said it would consider prosecution if the developer had still failed to comply by the deadline of 5 May, and that Mrs J would have the right to comment on a new retrospective planning application to regularise the other elements.
29. In May, Mrs J referred her complaint to the Ombudsman.

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Analysis

30. 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 ‘fault’ and, where we find it, we can consider the impact of the fault and ask the council in question to address this.
31. 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 strongly it has made the wrong decision. We do not uphold a complaint simply because a person disagrees with something a council has done.
32. In this case, the Council identified several departures from the approved plans, mainly affecting access to and visibility from balconies at the rear of the building, which had a potential impact on Mrs J’s privacy. In doing so, the developer had breached one of the conditions the Council had placed on the permission, that the development adhere to the approved plans; and for this reason the Council served them with a BCN, giving until October 2024 to return the building to what the Council had approved.
33. A main point of Mrs J’s complaint is that, despite the expiry of this deadline, the Council did not then proceed to prosecute the developer, but instead gave them a further deadline, and then only for some of the unpermitted elements of the work (those the Council had deemed harmful).
34. There was, therefore, something of an about-turn in the Council’s approach to this, and I can appreciate this may have been difficult for Mrs J to understand or accept.
35. However, councils have very broad discretion in the use of their planning enforcement powers, and, even where there are clear and indisputable breaches of planning permission, the law allows councils to take no action, if they see fit.
36. Therefore, while the developer had not complied with the BCN by the original deadline, this did not mean the Council was then required to prosecute. In her complaint to the Council, Mrs J said “[the BCN] clearly stated that failure to comply would result in immediate prosecution in magistrates' court”, but this is not correct – rather, the BCN merely warned there was a risk of prosecution for non-compliance, which is what I would expect it to say.
37. And in response to my enquiries, the Council said:

“Although the BCN was not complied with within the original timeframe, the owners were actively working towards a solution. Under the [local planning enforcement policy], the Council must allow a reasonable period for compliance where progress is being made. For this reason, a series of milestones was agreed, with an overall deadline of five months from the date of the letter, and a fall-back option that if the owner refused to comply, they could be summonsed to court.”

38. I consider the Council has adequately explained its decision to provide the developer further time for compliance. This was a decision it was entitled to make, and I have no grounds to find fault here.
39. Mrs J has also questioned the Council’s decision to only require the developer to remedy certain elements of the BCN, after its expiry, rather than all of the breaches it had listed. The Council explained to me it had made this decision based on several factors, including neighbours’ concerns, an assessment of planning harm, and a “practical, policy-based approach to resolving each element”.
40. Again, I acknowledge this change in the Council’s approach will naturally have caused Mrs J some frustration and disappointment. I also note Mrs J considers the revised list of ‘enforceable’ elements does not fully address the impact on her privacy of the development. However, this remains a decision for the Council to make, and I consider it has provided adequate explanation for doing so. There is also no evidence of fault by the Council in this.
41. I will also note that, since Mrs J submitted her complaint, the Council has considered a new planning application from the developer, which sets out all the changes they have made, including those covered by the extended enforcement deadline. The Council has considered this application and approved it, with the case officer’s providing detailed reasons for their consideration of each element.
42. I cannot consider this because it post-dates the period covered by my investigation, but I make this observation because the Council has now confirmed it is satisfied all enforcement matters have been addressed and has closed its investigation.

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Decision

43. I find no fault.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman