Summary: We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint about the Council’s handling of a planning matter. This is because it does not cause Miss X significant injustice.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Miss X, complains the Council has failed to take action against her neighbour (Y) for development she believes amounts to a breach of planning control. She says the development results in a loss of privacy to her home.

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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)
3. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate. 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

4. I considered information provided by Miss X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

Grants of planning permission

5. The Council granted planning permission for development at Y’s property more than 10 years ago; any complaint about its decisions on Y’s applications is therefore late.
6. Miss X says the Council only granted planning permission due to the presence of screening between Y’s property and that of another neighbour, Z. She says the screening has now been removed and she believes this should void the planning permission.
7. The screening Miss X refers to was part of Z’s property rather than that of Y. The Council could not therefore require Y to retain it as part of the planning permission. It was Z’s decision to remove the screening and this does not void the permission as Miss X suggests. The planning permission therefore remains valid and the Council cannot take action against Y or require them to submit a further application, as Miss X would like.

Recent development

8. Miss X says Y has carried out further development more recently without planning permission and says this causes overlooking to her property. The Council has investigated and found no breach of planning control, but Miss X disagrees.
9. We do not investigate all the complaints we receive. In deciding whether to investigate we need to consider various tests. These include the alleged injustice to the person complaining. We only investigate the most serious complaints.
10. We have reached no view on whether the Council considered the alleged breach properly but we will not investigate the issue further as it does not cause Miss X significant injustice. This is because the alleged unauthorised development does not have significantly more of an impact than the development approved by the Council more than 10 years ago. It also sits some 20m from Miss X’s property. It is therefore likely, on balance, that the Council would decide not to take further action even if it agreed the development required planning permission.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the matter does not cause Miss X significant injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman