Northumberland County Council adopts new planning procedures after being forced to pay out £300

The complainant, known as Mr X, was unhappy with the council’s decision to allow one of his neighbours to build a balcony in his back garden at a property in Morpeth. He felt the decision had impacted on his privacy and complained to the council before taking the matter up with the Ombudsman.

Speaking at Wednesday’s meeting of the council’s communities and place scrutiny committee, planning manager Judith Murphy explained that the Ombudsman felt the report compiled by officers was not detailed enough. She outlined the changes that would be made going forward.

Mrs Murphy said: “This is off the back of a normal house extension for a house in Morpeth for a balcony built out the back of the house. We get so many planning applications, so we try and keep reports as short as possible.

“It was assessed and went through to approval, but one of the neighbours complained to say his privacy was gone. We didn’t go into full detail in the report, but we did look at it.

“The complainant wasn’t happy and eventually went to the Ombudsman. They had no way of knowing whether we had considered this because we hadn’t documented it in the report.

“They recommended that we pay him £300 so he could get some screening on his garden, as the Ombudsman agreed that the privacy had been lost. The Ombudsman said we need to document more of our decisions and we have amended our procedure for household planning applications.”