Sloppy work by the Local Government Ombudsman

In October 2006, we made a complaint about maladministration by Nottinghamshire County Council in respect of the Replacement Nottinghamshire Minerals Plan to the Local Government Ombudsman.

In early December we received a response from the Ombudsman’s office, but were very disappointed to find that most of the issues we raised have not been investigated at all.  Having taken more than two years to reply, the investigator asked for our response to her “investigations” within two weeks.

Our detailed response follows:

We raised five issues in our complaint made on 10 October 2006.

Issue 1:   Officers failed to follow significant government guidelines in preparing the Plan in respect of the Gunthorpe allocation.

You have investigated in great detail one of the issues – the impact on the Bulcote Conservation Area and its listed buildings – but have given no attention to the more significant issues of the potential damage to the wider area, notably issues relating to flooding in this flood-prone area and the impact of dewatering on ground stability in this geologically fragile area.

Various government policy guidelines require issues of flooding and ground stability to be considered at the Plan stage as well as the Planning Application stage.  These were not followed by the Council who took the view that all such matters could be left until the Planning Application stage.  This, however, is contrary to the policy guidelines and the overarching requirement in MPG 1 that sites should be identified on the proposals map and in the Plan as specific sites for mineral if any planning applications which come forward for those sites are likely to be acceptable in planning terms. MPG1 states that the purpose of this requirement is to provide a good degree of certainty to applicants, landowners and the general public that mineral development will take place.  It is under these circumstances that the MPA has a responsibility to ensure that major issues relating to the allocated sites are addressed at the Plan stage.  In this instance, they were not.  Furthermore, the MPA went to some lengths, by selective reporting, omission and untrue statements to conceal the fact that there was considerable reason to believe that the sites were never likely to be acceptable in planning terms.

You have referred in your letter to the Public Inquiry and the Inspector’s work and your inability to question the decisions made by the Inspector.  But we have not asked you to do this.  Nor have we submitted a complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman about the actions of the Inspector as you state on page 8.

Our complaint referred solely to the actions of the Mineral Planning Authority in respect of the Minerals Plan.  You have not addressed the issue of why the MPA did not follow its obligations to assess ground stability and flooding issues at the Plan stage.  You refer letter to the Ombudsman’s view (Anne Seex’s letter of 30 April 2007) that the extent and depth of consideration and the weight to be place on a particular issue is a matter of judgement and “merits”.  We do not accept that such judgement exercised by a MPA can extend to ignoring major issues of importance such as flooding and ground stability to which specific government guidances apply.

We are not satisfied, therefore, that you have explored our complaint about this issue.

Issue 2.  Officers showed bias in favour of, and possibly collusion with a particular mining company in respect of the Gunthorpe allocation
(a) during the preparation of the Plan, they failed to make consistent or transparent decisions in terms of inclusion or exclusion of particular allocations to the advantage of a particular company
(b) during the Public Inquiry into the Minerals Plan there was liaison between Officers and the particular mining company over evidence which had the effect of (a) promoting the interests of the mining company over its competitors and (b) misleading the Inspector over progress and prospects of a related planning application.

You have not investigated this issue.

In your letter, you refer to the withdrawal of Tarmac’s planning application and conclude that we have not suffered an injustice as a result, and gave this as a reason for not investigating this matter.

This is a complete misunderstanding of the situation.  The planning application was not the subject of our complaint.  Our complaint referred solely to the allocation of a site in the Minerals Plan.  The allocation of the site per se creates harm and injustice to the community for the reasons given in our complaint.

You state that I have provided information about an investigation into the relationship between the County Council Severn Trent Water and Tarmac being undertaken by the Audit Commission.  I have provided no such information and can see no relevance to the issue I have raised.

We are not satisfied, therefore, with the reasons you have given for deciding not to investigate this issue.

Issue 3.  We complained that Officers presented inaccurate, biased and non-comprehensive reports to Councillors to inform their voting decisions about the Gunthorpe allocation at Council meetings.

We can see no reference in your letter to this issue.

Issue 4:  We complained that the Monitoring Officer gave advice to two County Councillors representing one of the areas affected by the allocation who had indicated their predisposition to vote against their party line that they should not participate in debates or vote on the issue, while simultaneously taking no action in respect of other Councillors who had predetermined their vote in favour of the party line.

We accept that you have investigated part of this matter in detail and have criticised the directive advice given by the Monitoring Officer to two Councillors.  We also understand that the Officer who was responsible for giving advice in this way has now left the Council’s service.

But you have not considered our complaint about predetermined voting by other Members of the dominant party and the bias shown by the Monitoring Officer by giving directive advice to two Members who were known to be predisposed to voting against the inclusion of the Gunthorpe allocation in the Plan but not taking similar action in respect of other Members who had predetermined their vote in favour of including the Gunthorpe allocation.  The fact that the responsible Officer has now left the Council’s service does not negate this act of maladministration.

We are not satisfied, therefore, that you have investigated our complaint fully.

Issue 5:  We complained that the Council Leader offered to investigate our complaints about the biased, inaccurate and misleading reports made to Councillors.  He stated that if he found our complaints to be justified to the extent that the Councillors had been misled in their decision-making, he would recommend deletion of the Gunthorpe allocation from the Minerals Plan.  But after we presented our evidence, he failed to honour this undertaking, and instead gave instructions that Members or Officers were not to respond to contact from us thus infringing our democratic rights of access to Officers and Members at a crucial time in the Plan processes.

A previous letter from the Ombudsman, Anne Seex, (30 April 2007) set out reasons for not being able to pursue this issue on the grounds that improper actions by one Member (albeit the Leader of the Council) could not be construed as maladministration by the Council.

You have not referred to this issue in your letter but we are prepared to accept this argument for the inability of the LGO to pursue this issue.