LGO rebukes council for failure to adequately defend planning appeal

A chicken shed might have been less visually intrusive had East Staffordshire Borough Council properly defended a planning appeal, Local Government Ombudsman Jane Martin has found.

The council had refused a local farmer permission to build a free-range egg-laying unit because its mass would have been too large and the site inappropriate.

But permission was granted when the applicant appealed to the Planning Inspectorate.

The council submitted a response to this but did not include any conditions it considered should be added if permission were given.

According to the complainants, a condition should have been imposed on the mass of the building on the sloping site, but in the absence of this the farmer imported over 100,000 tonnes of material to produce a level, higher, area on which to build.

The council’s failure to suggest a condition about ground levels led to the building being more visually prominent than it might have been.

Ms Martin said the complainants had a reasonable expectation that the council would do more to protect their position and defend the appeal, but it had done only “the minimum required”.

She said: “In my view, the council then had a duty to defend its decision and respond to the Planning Inspectorate. The council did not robustly defend the appeal. … It had the opportunity to suggest conditions but did not do so.”

The Ombudsman found maladministration causing injustice, and recommended the council to pay the three nearest complainants £500 each, and £150 to another complainant who lived further away.

The full report is available at the following link: http://www.lgo.org.uk/news/2011/jun/east-staffordshire-council-response-planning-appeal-criticised/