Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the way the Council considered a planning application. We have not seen enough evidence of fault in the Council’s actions to justify an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mrs X represents a local campaign group. She complains about the Council’s decision to approve a planning application for a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) on a site near her home.
2. She says Council officers interpreted policy criteria according to their preferences rather than the agreed policy wording. She also says the Council ignored the advice from Natural England.
3. Mrs X also complains the Council failed to refer the application to the Planning Committee for a decision.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. 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))

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by Mrs X and the Council.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

Back to top

My assessment

7. Councils should approve planning applications in line with their local development plan, unless material planning considerations suggest otherwise. Material planning considerations may include:
• Access to the highway;
• Protection of ecological and heritage assets; and
• The impact on neighbouring amenity.
8. The Planning Officer prepared a report on the application. This includes a summary of the objections received and the reasons why the Planning Officer considers the proposal overcomes them.
9. The report notes the location of the site and that it is identified in the Council’s statutory development plan as a site for ‘significant mixed use development’. This includes new homes and employment areas with investment including public transport and highway infrastructure.
10. Mrs X is concerned that the Master plan for the area is not yet complete and therefore the development proposed cannot be in accordance with the Master plan
11. The Planning Officer report sets out why the Officer considers the proposal is acceptable even though the Master plan is not complete.
12. A senior Officer agreed with the Planning Officer’s recommendation and the application is approved under the Council’s scheme of delegation.
13. Mrs X says the Council has ignored advice from Natural England which say a big part of the area is restorable.
14. The Council has included conditions on the planning permission. One condition requires the developer to provide a Peat Management Plan which must be approved in writing by the Council before any development work can begin. This must include a peat compensation design in collaboration with Natural England. Therefore I have not seen enough evidence that the Council has ignored the advice of Natural England.
15. We will not investigate this complaint. It is the Council’s role, as local planning authority, to reach a judgement about whether a development is acceptable. This must be after consideration of local and national planning policies, comments from statutory consultees, and objections/representations from people affected by the decision.
16. The evidence strongly suggests that this is what has happened in this case and therefore the Ombudsman would be unlikely to find that there had been fault if she investigated.
17. Mrs X is a member of a campaign group which objected to the application. Mrs X says, as the group has more than 3,000 members, the application should have been referred to the Planning Committee for a decision. However, the group is a single body and made its representations as such. There is no evidence that the groups’ objections should have been considered by the Council as coming from many residents. The number of objections received did not trigger the Council’s process for referring the application to the Planning Committee.

Back to top

Final decision

18. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint made on behalf of the campaign group. This is because we have not seen enough evidence of fault in the way the Council considered and decided the planning application. If Mrs X believes the developer has breached the planning conditions she can make a report to the Council’s planning enforcement team.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman