DER0679272 – Your response to my Appeal
Dear Mr Harriss,
Thank you for your consideration of my appeal and the detail
of your reply.
I must comment before proceeding in a different direction.
I am extremely surprised that the legal department seems to
have suggested to you that so long as all the owners have been notified before
the application reaches a point of decision, be it by the Planning Committee or
in this case eventually the Director, then everything complies with procedures
and the law – thus implying that it doesn’t really matter whether the original Certificate
is accurate or not. This is an obvious nonsense.
The legal case hinges on the deficiency of the Certificate B
submitted with the application.
That Certificate was clearly deficient the day it was
submitted and is deficient to this day.
Had this deficiency remained unknown to the Council then
there could be no maladministration by them.
However that deficiency did
become known to the Council.
The Court of Appeal ruling in the case of Main v Swansea
City Council was precisely about the consequences of deficiencies in the
original Certificate but that ruling (apart from dealing with the specific
circumstances of that case) also laid out a general interpretation of the
consequences of deficiencies.
On careful reading, it is clear that the degree of
deficiency in an original Certificate can or may ‘go to the jurisdiction’ – ie the
authority of the LA to consider the application at all.
The judgment as to whether it does or not in any specific
case can only be made by a Court.
So, if an LA becomes aware of deficiencies, they cannot know
whether or not they have jurisdiction and thus cannot logically proceed.
That’s it – top and bottom – front and back.
I don’t want to labour the point, but it may well be that
your legal department might want another think about this.
Failing this, I must advise you that I need to proceed to
the Local Government Ombudsman for their view.
Yours respectfully
Paul Richardson
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