Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s decision to grant planning permission for her neighbour’s loft extension. The Council considered the relevant legislation and the objections received and decided to approve the application. Without fault, this is a decision the Council is entitled to make.

The complaint

1. The complainant, I shall call Mrs X, complains the Council:
• failed to consider her comments on her neighbours planning application
• failed to visit the site or her property before making its decision; and
• granted permission despite the application not meeting the Council’s design guides

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start an investigation if the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

5. Planning controls the design, location and appearance of development and its impact on public amenity. Planning controls are not designed to protect private rights or interests.
6. Local Planning Authorities must consider each application it receives on its own merits and decide it in line with their local planning policies unless material considerations suggest otherwise. Material considerations concern the use and development of land in the public interest and include issues such as overlooking, traffic generation and noise. People’s comments on planning and land use issues linked to development proposals will be material considerations. Councils must take such comments into account but do not have to agree with those comments.
7. A council planning officer will write a report assessing the proposed development. The report will refer to relevant planning policies and the planning history of the site; summarise peoples’ comments; and consider the main planning issues for deciding the application. The assessment often involves the planning officer in balancing and weighing the planning issues and judging the merits of the proposed development. The report usually ends with a recommendation to grant or refuse planning permission.
8. A senior planning officer will consider most reports, but some go to the council’s planning committee for councillors to decide the application. The senior officer (or councillors at committee) may disagree with the case officer’s recommendation because it is for the decision maker to decide the weight given to any material consideration when deciding a planning application. Development usually gets planning permission if the council considers it is in line with planning policy and finds no planning reason(s) of enough weight to justify a refusal.
9. The Council is not obliged to visit an application site. In this case the Council decided it had enough information to assess the proposal without making a site visit. This is a decision it is entitled to make. There is no requirement for the Council to visit neighbouring properties to application sites.
10. The case officer wrote a report on the proposal. The report includes a summary of all the objections to the application, including those from Mrs X. The planning officer’s report lays out what legislation has applied to the case and why the officer has made their recommendation. The officer decided the application would not have a significant harmful impact on the character of the area. This is a professional judgement and decision the officer is entitled to make.
11. It is for planning officers and committee members to balance both national and local policy and decide to approve an application or not. We must consider whether there was fault in how the Council did this, not whether the decision was right or wrong. Without fault in the decision-making process, we cannot question the decision itself. While Mrs X may disagree with the decision, this does not make it wrong.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because it does not meet the tests set out in our Assessment Code. We are unlikely to find evidence of fault in the way the Council decided to approve her neighbour’s planning application.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman