Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s conduct in granting planning permission for a development. The complaint is late and there is no good reason to exercise discretion to investigate this matter now. Even if the complaint were not late, there would not be enough evidence of fault by the Council to warrant investigation by us.

The complaint

1. Mr X said a senior planning officer acted improperly to influence a planning application. He said the result is a property built without adequate parking that will make parking issues worse in his area.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
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.(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 provided by the complainant and checked documents on the Council’s planning portal.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. We expect a complaint to be made within 12 months of a person becoming aware of the matters complained of. Where a person is unaware of a matter more than 12 months past at the time it happened, but approaches us within 12 months of becoming aware, we do not treat the matter as late.
7. Where a person is aware of a matter more than 12 months before they approach us, we may still exercise discretion to consider if the person was prevented from doing so.
8. In this case, the Council’s planning committee granted planning permission for the development almost 14 months before Mr X approached us. The record of the reasoning of the planning committee that decided the application pre-dated that. And Mr X had also received the Council’s response to his data access request before escalating his complaint to the final stage. He contacted us 364 days after the date of the Council’s final response.
9. Mr X was clearly aware of the matters he now complains of more than 12 months before he approached us. That he may have continued to pursue these matters in the meantime does not affect that. The Council also completed dealing with his complaint within two months. So, it did not delay him contacting us. The complaint to us is thus late and there is no good reason to exercise discretion to investigate it now.
10. Even if the complaint were in time, it is unlikely we would find enough fault to justify investigating it. This is because the decision to grant permission was made by the Council’s planning committee, not an officer under delegated powers. The planning committee had to make the decision because the Council’s highways department, as a statutory consultee, had objected to the development on the ground it would provide insufficient parking. The planning committee’s duty was to consider relevant planning matters. It could decide what relative weight to give to them. The two relevant planning matters in this case were the acknowledged lack of parking and the shortfall in the Council’s five-year supply of housing against government targets. There had been a recent change of government shortly before the planning committee sat. Government policy had changed to a position where a failure to meet these five-year housing supply targets creates a presumption in favour of granting planning permission, even in cases where it would otherwise normally be refused. The planning committee identified its supply as being only 2.9 years. It could therefore decide that the failure to meet the housing supply target outweighed the lack of parking spaces and approve the development. There would not be enough evidence of fault to would warrant investigation by us even if the complaint were not late.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because it is late and there is no good reason to exercise discretion to investigate these matters now.
12. Even if the complaint were not late, investigation would be unlikely to find enough evidence of fault by the Council to warrant our further involvement.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman