Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s highways officer’s consultee comments on his withdrawn planning application, or how the Council responded to his complaint. There is not enough evidence of fault by the Council to warrant us investigating. An investigation would not achieve any worthwhile outcome. There is insufficient significant injustice caused to Mr X by the Council to justify an investigation. We do not investigate councils’ complaint handling where we are not investigating the core issues which gave rise to the complaint.

The complaint

1. Mr X is a planning applicant. He has submitted various applications relating to a site he seeks to develop. Mr X complains:
1. a Council officer lied and misrepresented one of his planning applications regarding parking and highways issues;
2. the Council failed to act when he told officers about the lies and misrepresentations;
3. the Council failed to properly consider his complaint.
2. Mr X says he has been affected by the officer’s intentional lies and misrepresentations. He says he had to withdraw the planning application and lodge another one, which cost him a further application fee and caused significant delays to his plans.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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 injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement; or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

5. Mr X says the comments by the Council’s highways officer on his application were lies and misrepresented his planning proposals. The Council’s complaint response says the highways officer did not lie about or misrepresent Mr X’s plans. It says the officer identified inconsistencies in the information Mr X had submitted with the application and raised material planning concerns.
6. As a formal consultee, it was the officer’s role to assess Mr X’s application in terms of highways and parking issues. This is what the officer did. It is not our role to decide whether Mr X’s position or that of the highways officer was correct regarding his withdrawn application. It was the purpose of the planning process to do that. As Mr X disagreed with the officer’s comments, the route he had available to him to determine whether his development proposal was acceptable in planning terms was to proceed with the application. If the Council’s planning officers had refused the permission on highways or other material planning grounds, he would have then had the right to appeal the decision at the Planning Inspectorate who could have considered the application afresh. There is insufficient evidence of Council fault here to justify us investigating. Furthermore, an investigation by us cannot resolve the dispute between Mr X and the Council’s highways officer regarding the merits of his withdrawn application, so there is no worthwhile outcome an investigation would achieve.
7. Mr X complains the Council did not act in response to his complaints about the officer’s consultee comments. He complained about them while the application was ongoing. It is not for other council officers to intervene in an active planning process. The correct route to assess the entire application, including the highways officer’s views on it, was to allow planning officers to consider all information and make their decision. There is not enough evidence of Council fault on this issue to warrant us investigating.
8. An injustice Mr X claims is that he was affected by the officer’s comments. But the planning process often results in differences of opinion between people involved. That someone disagreed with Mr X about the highways issues in his application is not a sufficiently significant injustice to him to warrant an investigation. Mr X also says he incurred the cost of a second planning application and delays to his development plans. We cannot say whether his withdrawn application would have received permission from the Council, at appeal to the Planning Inspectorate, or if another application would have been required. But it was Mr X’s decision to withdraw his application which directly led to his need for a second application and the resulting delay impacts, not any action by the Council.
9. Mr X says the Council did not properly investigate his complaint. We do not investigate councils’ internal complaint-handling processes in isolation where we are not investigating the core issues giving rise to the complaint. It is not a good use of our resources to do so. That limitation applies here so we will not investigate this part of the complaint.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because:
• there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council to warrant us investigating; and
• an investigation would not achieve any worthwhile outcome; and
• there is insufficient significant personal injustice to justify an investigation; and
• we do not investigate councils’ complaint handling where we are not investigating the core issues giving rise to the complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman