Summary: Mr C says the Council published minutes of a planning meeting which failed to give adequate reasons for the planning committee’s decision to approve a planning application in his village. He says this caused him injustice because his faith in the planning system has been undermined. The Council was not at fault. The minutes were ‘adequate’.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I have called Mr C, says the Council was at fault for the way it carried out and recorded a planning application for a development in its village. He says the Council:
1. did not properly record its reasons for departing from the recommendations of the planning officer, who recommended a refusal of permission, and
2. departed from procedure by failing to organise a site visit for councillors prior to the planning committee meeting which refused the application.
2. Mr C says this caused him injustice because the failure to record reasons undermines the faith of the public in the planning process and permission may have been wrongly granted because of the lack of a site visit.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
4. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I spoke to Mr C and read the materials that he had provided alongside his complaint. I looked at relevant policies and law and wrote an enquiry letter to the Council. I considered all the evidence and wrote a draft decision.
6. Mr C and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.

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What I found

What should happen

Planning permission

7. The central government has passed laws and regulations and issued guidance to control planning in England. The general rule, set out in the National Planning Policy Framework, is that permission for planning must always be granted by a local planning authority, unless there are sufficient reasons not to do so. Reasons not to do so include a finding that the development would interfere with the ‘amenity’ of local people and that the development does not comply with local planning policy and guidance.
8. Councils are the planning authorities for their areas. Those wishing to carry out development in the area must usually ask their council for planning permission.
9. On receipt of an application for planning permission, councils must process the application correctly. They must notify local people affected by the development. An officer must write a report considering the application and making a recommendation either for a grant or a refusal of permission.
10. Smaller planning applications may be considered by a planning officer under ‘delegated powers’. Larger, controversial or unpopular applications will be considered by the Council’s planning committee.

Probity in planning

11. The Local Government Association has issued guidance on what Councils should report when a decision is at odds with a planning officer’s recommendation. It says: If a planning committee makes a decision contrary to the officers’ recommendation ‘a detailed minute of the committee’s reasons should be made and a copy placed on the application file. Councillors should be prepared to explain in full their planning reasons for not agreeing with the officer’s recommendation.
12. All applications that are clearly contrary to the development plan… are known as ‘departures’ from the development plan. If it is intended to approve such an application, the material considerations leading to this conclusion must be clearly identified, and how these considerations justify overriding the development plan must be clearly demonstrated.
13. it may also be sensible to give reasons for resolving to grant permission and having those accurately captured in minutes of the meeting. This may be particularly so where there is an overturn of an officer recommendation and/or where the application is particularly controversial due to planning policy protections and/or weight of objections.
14. It should always be remembered that the public have a stake in the planning process and are entitled to understand how decisions are reached.
15. The question of how detailed a minute must be has been addressed by the Courts. Lord Brown stated, ‘the reasons for a decision [where the committee rejects the report recommendation] must be intelligible and they must be adequate. They must enable the reader to understand why the matter was decided as it was and what conclusions were reached on the principle important controversial issues’. (Lord Brown, South Buckinghamshire district Council v Porter (No 2) (2004) 1WLR108).

What happened

16. Mr C lives in a village on the edge of an area of outstanding natural beauty in the Council’s area. The Council is the planning authority for the area.
17. The Council received an application for a small development of fewer than ten houses on the edge of the village. A planning officer wrote a report which recommended that the application should be refused because it ‘would result in a loss of openness of the countryside’ and would ‘have a harmful impact’ on the character and appearance of the village and the conservation area.
18. The Council’s policy required the matter to be decided by the Planning Committee rather than decided under delegated powers because:
1. It was sensitive
2. It had attracted considerable publicity and attention.
19. Because of COVID, the Council did not carry out a site visit as is required under its policy. Instead, an officer visited and took a video of the site which was shown at the committee meeting which decided the application.
20. At this meeting, some councillors attended in person and others remotely. While the Council’s policy says committee members should visit a site before making a decision, no one did so in this case because of COVID.
21. The committee heard a submission from the planning officer and watched a video of the site. The committee took the decision to overturn the planning officer’s report and to grant permission. The minutes of the meeting show that the committee considered the proposal in total for 35 minutes.
22. The minutes stated, ‘permission granted because the committee considered the proposed development would not result in an unacceptable loss of openness and would have no harmful impact’ on the conservation area.

Was there fault causing injustice?

23. The Ombudsman, when dealing with complaints about the granting of planning permission, cannot consider whether the decision was right or wrong. It is the role of the planning system, not the Ombudsman, to decide on an application. My role is to determine whether there has been administrative fault in the way the decision was made.
24. In this case, Mr C complains not that the decision was wrongly made, although he believes that it was, but that the Council failed to record its reasons for rejecting the planning officer’s advice and failed to carry out a site visit.

Failure to explain reasons for going against officer’s recommendation

25. The case officer's report considered the application against relevant local and national planning policies. It set out the consultees' responses and summarised the objections that had been received. It considered the impact on the amenity of existing properties.
26. The report in this case clearly considered relevant factors and recommended a refusal of permission. The Council says that, at the meeting, the report was considered and the relevant factors were weighed and debated fairly and openly by the Councillors for 35 minutes before they decided, on a split vote, to ignore the officer’s recommendation and grant permission.
27. The Local Government Association’s Probity in Planning guidance, and case law, says that if planning committee’s make decisions that are contrary to an officer’s recommendation, they should provide a detailed minute of their reasons. It says it ‘may be sensible’ to provide reasons in cases such as this.
28. The Courts have ruled that the minutes only need to include consider the ‘principle, important issues’ and that the minute only needs to be ‘adequate’ to allow the reader to understand why the matter was decided.
29. Mr C does not consider that the minute was adequate. I cannot make that finding. While the minute could certainly have been fuller, it has stated why the decision was made: because the committee rejected the reports two main reasons for recommending a refusal of permission which were that the development would ‘result in a loss of openness of the countryside’ and would ‘have a harmful impact’ on the character and appearance of the village and the conservation area
30. For this reason, while I understand Mr C’s frustration, I do not, on the evidence so far seen, find fault.

Failure to organise site visit

31. There is no requirement in law for a site visit. This committee met during the COVID crisis. The committee saw a video and heard evidence from a planning officer. Some of the committee will have known the site. I do not, on the evidence seen so far, find fault.

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Final decision

32. I have decided that the Council was not at fault. I have closed my investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman