Cornwall Council (23 007 468)
Category : Planning > Planning applications
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 14 Sep 2023
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s decision to remove the public comments it received about a planning application from its website. This is because the complainant has not suffered any significant injustice.
The complaint
- Ms X has complained the Council removed the public comments it received in response to a planning application from its website. Ms X says the lack of transparency from the Council favours the applicant and compromises the decision making process.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We investigate 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 continue 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.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- I do not consider Ms X has suffered any significant injustice because of the Council’s decision to remove the public comments from its website.
- While councils do normally publish public comments, there is no legal obligation to do so and in this case the Council has explained why the comments were removed. Ms X, and other residents, have also still been able to comment on the proposal and this information will be available to the officer assessing the application.
- The application has also not yet been determined. Therefore, even if I did consider there was fault by the Council, I could not yet say this affected the outcome of the planning application.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because she has not suffered any significant injustice.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman