Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s decision to grant retrospective planning permissions for new houses near the complainant’s home. We have not seen any evidence of fault in the decision-making process.

The complaint

1. The complainant, I shall call Mrs D, complains that a developer built 2 houses near her home. She says the developer kept changing the houses and applying for planning permission after they started building the changes.
2. She also complains the Council has approved balconies on the houses which overlook her garden.

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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)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by Mrs D and the Council.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. We are not a planning appeal body. Our role is to review the process by which planning decisions are made. We look for fault in the decision-making process. If we find it, we decide whether it caused an injustice to the complainant.
7. Mrs D complains the developer made several applications to change an existing planning permission. Some of the applications were made after he had already started building outside the approved plans.
8. The law says a person who has undertaken unauthorised development can seek planning permission after the event. This can be by making a retrospective planning application.
9. The Council must make a decision on all planning applications it receives. This includes retrospective applications.
10. Before it made its decisions on the planning applications, the Council took account of the:
• application plans
• policies it considered relevant
• comments from neighbours (including Mrs D); and
• any other material considerations such as including information from the site visit or aerial photos.
11. The Council followed the decision-making process we would expect and so I find no fault.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate Mrs D’s complaint because we have not seen any evidence of fault in the decision-making process.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman