Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s handling of his neighbour’s planning application. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault in the way the Council reached its decision.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mr X, complains the Council’s planning officer did not visit his property to assess the impact of a neighbour’s planning application and failed to properly consider the impact of the proposal on his amenity. He says the development will affect his outlook.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

4. We are not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong.
5. Mr X complains the Council’s planning officer did not visit his property but there was no requirement for them to do so. Mr X acknowledges the planning officer visited the application site and had they felt it necessary to view it from his property they could have asked Mr X for access. Planning officers are trained to assess the impact of a planning application and we could not say the decision is flawed simply because the planning officer in this case did not look at the application site from within his property boundary.
6. The planning officer’s report shows how the Council considered the neighbour’s proposal and the report includes detailed reference to Mr X’s property. The planning officer ultimately concluded the proposal would cause no significant harm to Mr X or any other neighbour so the Council granted planning permission. I have not seen any evidence of fault in the way the Council reached the decision and we could not therefore question it. We also cannot achieve the outcome Mr X wants, which is to stop building work and reassess the application.

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Final decision

7. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman