Legal advice needed please

mattyprice4004

OP, you say some people are set to lose their homes.

Care to explain this in more depth?

wealdroam

OP, it might be worth you asking questions on the In My Home board.

There is a guy over there called planning_officer who seems to know what he is saying.

Of course, so do we here.

mommacrab

mattyprice4004 wrote: »

OP, you say some people are set to lose their homes.

Care to explain this in more depth?

People won't lose their homes. I believe the OP was saying that this new pumping station will cause their homes to lose value due to the size of the structure, loss of natural light, noise etc

mattyprice4004

clarerachel01 wrote: »

we have worked all our lives to buy and pay for our houses and some now stand to lose them

Quoted from the post in question, this reads as though people are going to actually lose their homes.

I'd be interested to know why they're going to lose their houses over this.

bod1467

It's the age-old issue where people go into negative equity and assume that means they'll lose their house. They won't, of course, unless they stop paying their mortgage.

All it means is that they're paying more for their house than its current value.

planning_officer

wealdroam wrote: »

OP, it might be worth you asking questions on the In My Home board.

There is a guy over there called planning_officer who seems to know what he is saying.

Of course, so do we here.

Thank you!

Just spotted this thread. There's some good advice above - the only way to challenge the decision is by a judicial review, which is purely if you have concerns that the application was handled wrongly, on a point of law (not just that you don't agree with the decision). However, you will usually need to set aside at least £20K for a judicial review, so I very much doubt whether that is a viable option. In any event, all a judicial review could possibly do is quash the decision. The planning application would then need to be reconsidered (properly) and the Council could well just grant permission again - so it could be a complete waste of time and money.

If you have genuine concerns about the handling of the application, then I would first write a letter of complaint to the Council, through their formal complaints procedure. If you are not happy with their response then you can write to the Local Government Ombudsman, who will investigate. They cannot overturn a decision though - the most you could get out of them is that they recommend the Council pays you some compensation (but this only depends on whether the Council really did do something incorrectly). You could argue that they lost some letters, but if they can show that it didn't affect the final decision of the application, then you're unlikely to get anything.

There is absolutely no harm in writing to formally complain to the Council first though (as you can't complain to the Ombudsman until you've gone through the Council's own complaints procedure).

Equaliser123

planning_officer wrote: »

Thank you!

Just spotted this thread. There's some good advice above - the only way to challenge the decision is by a judicial review, which is purely if you have concerns that the application was handled wrongly, on a point of law (not just that you don't agree with the decision). However, you will usually need to set aside at least £20K for a judicial review, so I very much doubt whether that is a viable option. In any event, all a judicial review could possibly do is quash the decision. The planning application would then need to be reconsidered (properly) and the Council could well just grant permission again - so it could be a complete waste of time and money.

If you have genuine concerns about the handling of the application, then I would first write a letter of complaint to the Council, through their formal complaints procedure. If you are not happy with their response then you can write to the Local Government Ombudsman, who will investigate. They cannot overturn a decision though - the most you could get out of them is that they recommend the Council pays you some compensation (but this only depends on whether the Council really did do something incorrectly). You could argue that they lost some letters, but if they can show that it didn't affect the final decision of the application, then you're unlikely to get anything.

There is absolutely no harm in writing to formally complain to the Council first though (as you can't complain to the Ombudsman until you've gone through the Council's own complaints procedure).

Cracking advice - particularly regarding the Local Government Ombudsman. Never actually used them but I do wonder how much power they have.

As I said before, JR is a non-starter in my view and glad you agree. I think even if the JR is won (and even then there is likely to be cost implications), the decision will simply be sent back to the planners for further consideration.