Decision Report 201910087

Summary

C complained about the planning procedure followed by the council for a planning application to build a dwelling house and garage on the site of a post office in C's street. C raised a number of concerns, including that the garage drawings were not published on the council's planning portal for comment, that the correct garage floor area was not shown on the block plan and that the planning officer approved a garage of 51 square metres and then allowed a garage to be built which was clearly larger than this. We took independent advice on the complaint from a planning adviser.

The council acknowledged to C and this office that they failed to upload all relevant information on this planning application to their planning portal, including the detailed garage drawings. However, they failed to apologise to C for this failing and explain what action they had taken to prevent this type of failing from happening again. We noted that the system upgrade the council advised they were now installing to prevent errors in manual uploading was reasonable and we asked the council for evidence of the completed implementation and confirmation of its scope.

We noted that the block plan did not show the garage floor area and it was not specifically required to do so. However, they said that the garage floor area in the block plan appeared to be considerably smaller than the garage shown in the approved garage plans and elevations and it would have been good practice for the council to have ensured that all plans were consistent.

We noted that although the planning report referred to the garage as being 51 square metres, the stamped plans were what was ultimately approved and what an applicant could then implement and they showed the garage as being 77.8 square metres. The council have said that the reference to a 51 square metre garage was based on a miscalculation by the planning officer and remedial action had been taken to address this.

We were concerned that the planning report did not contain any reference to the assessment of the garage or any evidence that the potential impacts of the garage were considered in the determination of the application. We were critical of the council in this regard.

We were also concerned that, despite being advised by the council that they did not re-notify neighbours about the change in the dimensions of the garage because this was to a reduced footprint with a lower impact, we did not see any evidence that the original proposal was for a garage which was larger than the one approved by the council. As such, it was not possible to determine that re-notification of the neighbours was not required. Therefore, we upheld the complaint.

Recommendations

What we asked the organisation to do in this case:

• Apologise to C for failing to upload all relevant information on the planning application to their planning portal, providing incorrect/misleading information on the size of the garage in the planning report, failing to include information on the assessment of the garage and its potential impact in the planning report, and, in their complaint response, unreasonably failing to explain to C why the planning report stated that the garage was 51 square metres, when at no time was a garage of that size approved. The apology should meet the standards set out in the SPSO guidelines on apology available at www.spso.org.uk/information-leaflets.

What we said should change to put things right in future:

• For planning reports for applications to appropriately address all aspects of a development.
• For site visits on planning applications to be recorded and include information such as the date of the visit, who attended, what was considered and any photographs taken.
• Plans for development should be consistent, in that the dimensions of buildings should be the same on all stamped approved plans.

In relation to complaints handling, we recommended:

• The council's responses to complaints should address all issues raised, as required by the Model Complaints Handling Procedure.

We have asked the organisation to provide us with evidence that they have implemented the recommendations we have made on this case by the deadline we set.