Unauthorised development - calls for enforcement action etc : Vale of Glamorgan Council

Ms B tried to raise concerns about a planning matter via the Council’s planning form but it would not submit. She therefore submitted her concerns through the Council’s complaints process. The Council took nearly three months to respond to her, and the response she received was very short and did not address most of the concerns she had raised. The Council later stated it had only considered her concerns as a planning query and not as a formal complaint.
The Ombudsman felt that Ms B had made it clear she was making a complaint, and that she should have received a more detailed response addressing the issues she had raised.

The Council agreed to provide Ms B with a Stage 1 complaint response, addressing all the matters she had raised (both planning and customer service related), and apologising to Ms B for the delay in her receiving a full response, to be provided within the Council’s 20 working day guidance for Stage 1 complaint responses.