Tesco at Little Lever. Reply from the Chief Executive to my Appeal.

Dear Mr Richardson

Appeal against Decision.

I write further to your e-mail of 5^th April regarding your complaint about the planning application 86999/11 and your dissatisfaction with the response provided by Tim Hill, Chief Housing and Planning Officer.

Please accept my apologies for the additional time required to complete the investigation into this matter. I have now considered your appeal and summarise the points you raised together with my conclusions below.

As you submitted the complaint to Helen Gorman as Monitoring Officer and as it concerned the interpretation of the law, you expected that it would be considered by her rather than by Tim Hill as head of the department you were complaining about.

Under the Council’s formal complaint5s procedure, initial complaints are investigated by an officer within the service who has not been previously involved with the matter. If the matter required an interpretation of the law, as in this case, then advice would be provided to the investigating officer by one of the Council’s lawyers.

Therefore, as Mr Hill is the Chief Officer with responsibility for planning, I find it was appropriate that he investigated at this stage.

You considered that the actions of officers between 23^rd January and early February were at variance with required procedures and the law. You consider that as a result the granted planning permission could have been quashed.

Mr Hill clearly states that he agrees with your timetable of events but that he does not consider that there has been a failure to follow the required procedures or the law.

I appreciate that you disagree and that you hold a different interpretation; you make reference to guidance issued by North Somerset County Council which supports your view and suggest that Bolton Council has not issued similar guidance demonstrates a careless approach.

While I accept that you have a view as to why North Somerset issued the guidance and consider that they were correct to do so, as you have been previously advised, the document to which you refer is not a determination of the law. It is merely guidance based on an interpretation of the law and was not given any weight when referred to in a recent court case.

With regards to your reference to the possibility of the granted permission being quashed, I note that you quote a paragraph extracted from an article in the Law Society Gazette from Sept 1987. This refers to instances where an application is granted without an owner being notified suggesting that a prompt application by that owner to have that permission quashed would be successful.  However reference to the timetable set out in your initial complaint clearly demonstrates that this was not the case here and that all owners had been notified before the application to Planning Committee and therefore prior to permission being granted.

Having fully reviewed the matter and based on advice from the Council’s legal service, I must advise you that I do not agree with your interpretation of what the law requires but uphold the view set out in Mr Hill’s original response. As such, I can find no evidence that officers acted incorrectly and I can find no evidence of maladministration. I do not propose to take any further action therefore.

I trust this clarifies the matter, however, if you are not satisfied with my decision, you may contact the Local Government Ombudsman  ……….. (Phone No, Address  etc)

Yours sincerely

Sean Harriss

Chief Executive.