Reporting a breach of planning control

Under the Data Protection Act the name and address of a person making a complaint or any other contact details, will not be disclosed.

If you have been asked to collect evidence to support your complaint, the Council may wish to use this to demonstrate that there has been a breach of planning control. Such evidence carries more weight if presented by the person who collected it and you may be asked if you are prepared to contribute to an appeal, but you are in no way obliged to do so. Most complaints are resolved without the need for formal action, so in most cases giving evidence will not be necessary.

Formal notices that are served on all interested parties in breach of planning regulations are public documents.

Once a case has been registered and allocated to an Officer, you will receive an acknowledgement letter which will include a case reference number. All investigations for this case will take place under the reference number provided.

The Officer will then commence their inquiries gathering the relevant information to aid their investigation; this may include a site visit to the location in question. The Officer will begin negotiations with the relevant parties in connection with the alleged breach of planning control; if a breach is identified the Officer will work towards resolving the breach.

Investigations can take anything from a few days to several months if we need to monitor or carry out in-depth research. Once we have completed the investigation we will inform you of the outcome.

The Council do not take formal action lightly and we try to resolve any issues through negotiation. However, if negotiations fail the Council will consider taking formal action to resolve the breach of planning control. There are a number of different legal notices which can be served and in most cases there is a right of appeal, which is dealt by the Planning Inspectorate.

When an appeal is logged, the notice will not come into force until a formal appeal decision is reached by the Planning Inspectorate. However, in some circumstances, the Council can follow an enforcement notice with a stop or temporary stop notice, which requires that the building work or use is stopped with immediate effect.

If legal notices are not complied with we can take legal action which could result in a significant fine.

Enforcement Appeal Cases