Complaining about how a council handled an application

The council planning complaint process deals with how an application was handled, not with whether the decision was right. That distinction governs everything. A complaint that the council should have refused permission will be closed without investigation, while a complaint that the council failed to notify you when its own published policy said it would is exactly the sort of thing the system exists to address. Knowing which one you have saves months.

The decision and the process are different complaints

Planning decisions are challenged in court, within six weeks, on grounds of legality. Third parties have no right of appeal against a grant of permission, which is the point most people discover too late.

Administrative failings are dealt with through complaints. Failing to send a neighbour notification letter, putting a site notice up in the wrong place or not at all, losing an objection, giving wrong advice on the telephone, taking a year to answer correspondence, deciding under delegated powers something the constitution said should go to committee: these are process issues, and the complaints route is the right one for them.

Sometimes a failure is both. A failure to consult can be a ground of legal challenge and a matter of maladministration. Where that is the case, the legal route has the short deadline, so take advice on it first and run the complaint alongside rather than instead.

The council's own complaint stages

Every authority publishes a corporate complaints procedure, and it has to be exhausted before anyone else will look at the matter. Most run two stages: an initial response from the service, then a review by someone more senior or by a corporate complaints team.

Write to the published complaints address rather than to the case officer. A message to the officer whose conduct is in question is correspondence, not a complaint, and it will not start the clock.

Set the complaint out in a form that can be investigated. State what should have happened, by reference to the council's own published procedure, the statutory publicity requirements or its statement of community involvement. State what actually happened, with dates. State what effect it had on you. And say what you want, whether that is an apology, a change to the procedure, or an acknowledgement that a consultation was mishandled.

Ask for the complaint to be logged with a reference and for confirmation of which stage you are at. Both matter later.

What the Ombudsman can look at

Once the council's own stages are complete, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman can investigate maladministration causing injustice. Maladministration means administrative fault: delay, failure to follow procedure, failure to take account of something relevant, giving misleading information, failure to keep proper records.

In planning, the complaints that are commonly investigated include these.

• Neighbours not notified where the council's own policy or the statutory publicity requirements said they should be.
• Site notices not displayed, displayed late, or displayed where nobody could see them.
• Objections received in time but not reported to the decision maker.
• An officer's report that materially misdescribes the proposal, for instance getting the height, the separation distance or the constraint wrong.
• A decision taken under delegated powers where the scheme of delegation required a committee decision, for example because a set number of objections had been received.
• Failure to consider an enforcement complaint in accordance with the council's published enforcement policy.
• Long unexplained delay, or failure to reply to correspondence.

The Ombudsman looks for a causal link between the fault and an injustice to you personally. Being unhappy about the outcome is not an injustice in that sense. Losing the opportunity to comment on an application that affected your property is.

What it cannot do

The limits are real and worth understanding before investing effort.

It cannot overturn a planning permission or require the council to revoke one. Revocation is a statutory power that carries compensation, and no ombudsman can direct it.

It cannot substitute its own planning judgement. If the council considered the right matters through a proper process and reached a conclusion you disagree with, the complaint fails however strongly you feel about the conclusion.

It will normally decline where you had a right of appeal to a court or tribunal, unless it was not reasonable to expect you to use it. It will normally decline complaints about events more than twelve months before the complaint was made, unless there is a good reason for the delay. And it will not investigate while court proceedings are on foot.

Councillor conduct is a separate route entirely, handled through the authority's standards arrangements and its monitoring officer. Refusal to supply information is another, taken up with the Information Commissioner under the environmental information rules.

Evidence that supports a process complaint

Process complaints are won on documents and dates. Gather them early, because records move.

1. The application file as published on the council's website, downloaded and dated, including the officer's report, consultation responses and the decision notice.
2. Your own correspondence, with send and receipt evidence.
3. Photographs of the site notice, or evidence of its absence, with dates.
4. The council's published policy on publicity and neighbour notification, and its statement of community involvement, downloaded on the date you rely on.
5. The constitution and scheme of delegation, showing when an application must go to committee.
6. A request under the environmental information rules for the internal correspondence, the notification list and the officer's file notes.
7. A simple chronology, one line per event, which is the document the investigator will use most.

Notification lists are the item worth asking for specifically. A council that says letters were sent should be able to produce the list of addresses and the date. Where the list omits your property, the complaint largely makes itself.

The developer's own account of consultation is worth reading too. A statement of community involvement submitted with an application describes what the applicant says they did, and a mismatch between that and what residents experienced is relevant material.

Remedies that are actually available

Expect modest, practical outcomes rather than dramatic ones. The usual remedies are an apology, an explanation, a payment recognising distress or the time and trouble of pursuing the complaint, a change to a procedure, and staff training.

Where the fault deprived someone of the chance to comment, the Ombudsman sometimes recommends a payment reflecting that lost opportunity, and occasionally recommends that the council considers whether any action is open to it, such as reviewing whether the development as built matches the permission. That is a long way short of undoing the permission.

Service improvements are the remedy with the widest effect and the one worth pressing for. A recommendation that the council reviews how it displays site notices, or that it audits its notification process, changes what happens to the next application on your street. Say in the complaint that this is what you want, because complainants who ask only for compensation tend to be offered only compensation.

Timescales for each stage

Work backwards from the twelve month limit. The clock generally runs from when you became aware of the matter, so a delay caused by the council's own slow complaints handling is usually excused, while a delay caused by waiting to see what happens is not.

Councils publish response times for each stage, commonly a few weeks for the first and longer for the review. If a stage overruns substantially you can ask the Ombudsman to look at the case anyway, on the basis that the council has had a reasonable opportunity.

An Ombudsman investigation takes months rather than weeks, and most complaints are decided on the papers. You will normally see a draft decision and can comment on factual errors before it is finalised.

None of this stops the development. If the aim is to influence what gets built, the effort is better spent earlier, in a well evidenced consultee response of the kind described for a parish council response, or in an objection that engages with policy as set out in the note on loss of privacy objections and the evidence that works. Understanding which documents an applicant has to submit helps too, and the report types index sets out what a scheme of a given kind normally involves.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. Legal challenges to a planning decision carry a strict six week deadline, so take advice promptly if the complaint concerns the lawfulness of a decision rather than its handling.