Summary: Mr X complains about the Council’s decision to remove a condition from a planning permission granted for a holiday park in his area. We will not investigate the complaint because an investigation is unlikely to find evidence of fault by the Council.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I refer to as Mr X, complains about the Council’s decision to remove a planning condition concerning occupation of holiday homes in a park in an AONB. He says this will have a negative impact on his local village and its environment.

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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 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)
3. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We do not start an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

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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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
7. I gave Mr X the opportunity to comment on my draft decision and considered the comments received.

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My assessment

8. Mr X disagreed with the decision taken by the Council on an application to remove a planning condition. He made a formal complaint to the Council which it addressed under its complaints procedure. While it noted Mr X’s disagreement with its decision, it did not uphold his complaint.
9. We cannot question a decision a council has made if it followed the right steps and considered the relevant evidence and information. The Council considered the objections made against the application to remove the condition but decided its removal did not make the development unacceptable in planning terms. This is a decision the Council is entitled to make.
10. There was delay by the Council in responding to the complaint but we will not generally investigate a council’s complaint handling when we are not investigating the substantive issue.
11. In responding to my draft decision, Mr X says while the issue of the planning conditions was raised as part of his complaint to the Council, this was only a small part of the matters raised. However, the complaint the Council responded to involved the planning conditions. Moreover, matters concerning earlier Council decisions for the site are too far in the past to be investigated now when we would reasonably have expected Mr X to have complained to us sooner about them.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because I have seen no evidence to suggest fault affected the Council’s decision.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman