Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council not notifying him of a change-of-use planning application for a nearby field. Even if there were Council fault in its planning notification process, the matter does not cause Mr X such significant personal injustice to justify an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X lives in a mostly rural area. He complains the Council failed to notify him about a change of use planning application for land adjacent to his.
2. Mr X says he was denied the opportunity to comment on the planning application. He wants the Council to notify landowners about planning applications made on adjacent land in future.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. The Ombudsman investigates complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide:

• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained; or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information from Mr X, relevant online planning documents and maps, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. The boundary of Mr X’s residential property is about 80 metres from the development site on field A. There is another undeveloped field, field B, in between Mr X’s house and the site. Mr X says field B is used for grazing livestock and that field A abuts land he owns. The Council says it did not identify Mr X as the owner of field B because the planning system does not require it to identify landowners when notifying on planning applications. Mr X considers this is wrong and believes the Council should notify all landowners about planning applications made on land next to theirs.
6. Even if there has been fault by the Council in its notification process, there is insufficient significant injustice caused to Mr X to warrant investigation. His loss of opportunity to comment on the application is not itself a sufficient significant personal injustice to justify an investigation. We could not now say that any comments on the application from Mr X would have altered the Council’s decision. In any event, there is also insufficient significant personal injustice to Mr X from the Council’s planning decision to warrant an investigation. The officer’s report considered the impact caused by the proposal for the land on the amenity of nearby residences, all of which are closer to the development site than Mr X’s house. Officers took the view there was no significant planning harm to those closer properties and the living conditions of their residents to warrant a refusal, once conditions on the operation of the development were added to the permission. On balance, officers would not have had planning amenity grounds to refuse the application relating to the development’s impact on Mr X’s property, given its greater distance from the development than those mentioned in their report.

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Final decision

7. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because even if there were Council fault, the loss of opportunity to comment on the application and the final planning outcome do not cause him such significant personal injustice to warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman