Summary: We will not investigate Mr X's complaint about the Council's handling of a planning appeal and his complaint. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault causing a significant injustice to justify our involvement.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council failed to properly consider his representations during a Householder Appeals Service (HAS) planning appeal. He says HAS rules prevented interested parties from making representations directly to the Planning Inspectorate after an appeal had started. Because of this, he asked the Council to reflect his concerns in its appeal submission. Mr X says the Council sent his submission to the Planning Inspectorate, but the Inspectorate rejected it as inadmissible.
2. Mr X also complains the Council's complaint response falsely stated it had received no objection from him to the planning application, despite his objection appearing on the Council's planning portal. He says these administrative and complaint-handling errors deprived him of a fair opportunity to engage in the appeal process and created a risk the appeal would be decided without consideration of all relevant information. Mr X wants the Council to apologise, correct its records, provide compensation, and review its procedures for handling similar matters.

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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 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))

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

6. The Council's records show it logged Mr X's objection on the public planning portal during the planning application process. As part of the statutory HAS process, the Council provides the Planning Inspectorate with the complete application file, including all representations received during the application stage. The Planning Inspector therefore had access to Mr X's original objection when deciding the appeal.
7. The Council mistakenly stated in its complaint response that it had not received an objection from Mr X. However, this error arose after the planning decision and did not affect the information available to the Planning Inspectorate. There is no evidence the error affected the outcome of the appeal. While the error may have caused Mr X frustration, any resulting injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. In addition, we do not normally investigate complaint handling as a stand-alone issue where we are not investigating the substantive matter.
8. Under the statutory HAS procedure, interested parties cannot make further representations once an appeal is underway. The Council was not required to incorporate Mr X's post-decision comments into its appeal submission or amend its appeal case to reflect his views. The Council forwarded Mr X's correspondence in line with its handling of post-decision comments. Therefore, there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council's handling of the appeal to justify an investigation.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate Mr X's complaint about the Council's handling of a planning appeal and his complaint. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council's handling of the appeal and any injustice arising from errors in its complaint response is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman