Decision report 201103983

Summary

Mr C moved into a house in a rural location. One plot in a development next to his home was not developed at the time, and was the subject of two planning consents in 2006 for a change in house type. In early 2011 another application was made, this time to build a two storey house. The applicant described this as a modification of one of the 2006 consents, and the council described it this way when notifying neighbours of the application.

Mr C complained that the information provided by the council, which said that the application was for the modification of a previous planning consent granted in May 2006, was incorrect; that the council’s response to his complaint contained inaccurate information; and that there had been a fault in the timing of advice given to the convener of the committee which determined the 2011 application.

We took advice from our planning adviser. The adviser said that the description of the proposal was chosen by the applicant. He said that 'modification of a previous consent' no longer existed and officers had corrected the description to 'an application for full planning consent'. Due to the nature of the minute taking, we could not use the information in them to decide if there was inaccurate information, but we noted that there did not appear to be any evidence that Mr C was disadvantaged as a result of this. The third issue had arisen as a result of decisions on how minutes should be taken and was not specific to the complaint.