Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about how the Council dealt with a planning application. There is not enough evidence of fault by the Council to warrant our further involvement.

The complaint

1. Mrs X says the Council failed to properly consider the effect on her home of approving a neighbouring development. She says these were structural issues, privacy and overlooking. She says the Council failed to take account of a habitable room and dismissed structural concerns as civil matters. She says it also failed to account for the fact that her home is in a conservation area, and was biased towards the applicant.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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), section 34(B)).

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and checked documents publicly available on the Council’s website.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. We do not act as a right of appeal against a decision to approve a development. Our role is to consider whether the Council took account of the planning matters before it.
6. Planning authorities like the Council must consider relevant planning matters when reaching decisions about applications. However, they can decide what relative weight to give to competing planning matters, as long as they give a relevant planning reason for their decisions.
7. In this case, the planning officer’s report on which the decision to grant permission was based considered relevant planning matters. It considered the effect on overlooking into Mrs X’s home of the garden works next door to be acceptable. While Mrs X disagrees about the height of a screening fence and the gap in it, the Council could decide the level of visibility was acceptable, given the viewing points were to be from a garden rather than from a habitable room in another property. The report recommending approval also considered the effect on the conservation area of the development, deciding it was acceptable. Any potential structural concerns regarding planting and the boundary would be civil matters, so it would not be fault for the Council to say so. That Mrs X takes the view the Council was biased is not evidence of fault.

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Final decision

8. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault in the way the Council considered the planning application to warrant our further involvement.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman