190906AuCtteePaper8Annex1ExtractOmbusmanLetterToComplainantPages1,2,15

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

99 & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 8 Annex B 10/09/19

Bridge­park House 99 McDon­ald Road Edin­burgh EH7 4NS

Tel: 0800 377 7530 Fax: 0800 377 7331 Web: www​.spso​.org​.uk

CON­FID­EN­TIAL

12 June 2019 Our ref: 201704544

Dear Dr. Gor­don Bulloch The Dulaig Seafield Avenue Grant­own-on-Spey PH26 3JF

Com­plaint about Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity – Final Decision

As you know, I have been look­ing into your com­plaint about Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity (the Author­ity). I know this has been a long pro­cess and I would like to acknow­ledge the time that it has taken for our work to be com­pleted. We are thor­ough in our invest­ig­at­ive pro­ced­ures and this can some­times mean that they take longer than we would wish. I am sorry that this has been the case here and would like to thank you for your patience and under­stand­ing through­out the invest­ig­a­tion. It has been very much appreciated.

I have now com­pleted my invest­ig­a­tion, and this let­ter gives you my decision. The com­plaints you agreed and which I invest­ig­ated are that:

(a) Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity unreas­on­ably failed to accept that its Plan­ning Com­mit­tee was mater­i­ally misled by one of the Applicant’s con­sult­ants dur­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of plan­ning applic­a­tion 2016/0060/DET (not upheld);

(b) Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity unreas­on­ably failed to accept that unreas­on­able time pres­sure was placed on the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee by the Chair of the Com­mit­tee whilst con­sid­er­ing plan­ning applic­a­tion 2016/0060/DET (not upheld);

© Plan­ning Con­di­tion 1 of 2016/0600/DET unreas­on­ably con­tra­vened the guid­ance in Cir­cu­lar 4/1998 (the Use of Con­di­tions in Plan­ning Per­mis­sions), in par­tic­u­lar the pre­ci­sion test (not upheld);

(d) Dis­charge of Plan­ning con­di­tion 1 of 2016/0600/DET was unreas­on­able (not upheld);

(e) Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity unreas­on­ably failed to take reas­on­able action to enforce plan­ning con­trol, includ­ing many of the plan­ning con­di­tions (not upheld); and

(f) Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity unreas­on­ably failed to ensure that the export of soil from the site was prop­erly con­trolled (not upheld).

I appre­ci­ate that the mat­ters you have com­plained about have been of sig­ni­fic­ant ongo­ing con­cern to you. Based on my invest­ig­a­tion and the inde­pend­ent advice I have received, I have not upheld your com­plaints and I recog­nise this may not be the out­come you were hop­ing for. I have explained the reas­ons for my decisions below. If there is any­thing you wish to dis­cuss once you have read this let­ter through, please do not hes­it­ate to con­tact me.

Back­ground

Your com­plaints relate to plan­ning applic­a­tion 2016/0060/DET (the Applic­a­tion), and the res­ult­ing devel­op­ment neigh­bour­ing your prop­erty. You raised a num­ber of com­plaints with the Author­ity from Octo­ber 2016 onwards. As you were dis­sat­is­fied with their responses, you brought your com­plaints to SPSO.

Invest­ig­a­tion

In invest­ig­at­ing your com­plaint, I have care­fully reviewed the doc­u­ment­a­tion provided by you and the Author­ity. I have also sought inde­pend­ent plan­ning advice from the Adviser. In provid­ing their advice, the Adviser took into con­sid­er­a­tion the fol­low­ing legis­la­tion and guidance:

• Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Scot­land) Act 1997
• Plan­ning etc. (Scot­land) Act 2006
• Plan­ning Series Cir­cu­lar 4/1998: The use of con­di­tions in plan­ning permissions
• Plan­ning Series Cir­cu­lar 5/2009: Hier­archy of Developments
• Plan­ning Series Cir­cu­lar 10/2008: Plan­ning Enforcement
• Stand­ards Com­mis­sion Scot­land Coun­cil­lors’ Code of Con­duct 2018

The remit of this office is set out in the Scot­tish Pub­lic Ser­vices Ombuds­man Act 2002. Our role is to con­sider com­plaints where the body in ques­tion has not done some­thing they should have done (ser­vice fail­ure) or where they have made a mis­take in the pro­cess of mak­ing a decision (mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion).

As explained by my col­league, Mr Noble, whilst we always take the views of com­plain­ants into account, our invest­ig­a­tions are inde­pend­ent and decisions about wheth­er or to what extent we invest­ig­ate com­plaints are ours to make. It is not our web­site. Some­times the media con­tact us to ask if you would like to speak to them. We will not give them any inform­a­tion that could identi­fy you, but if you would like to speak to the media our com­mu­nic­a­tions team can put you in touch with them. If you would like this, or have any ques­tions about the reports that we make pub­lic, please let me know.

If you have any oth­er ques­tions about my decision, please con­tact me on the phone num­ber below.

Yours sin­cerely

Lily Mal­colm-Watts Com­plaints Reviewer

Invest­ig­a­tions by the Scot­tish Pub­lic Ser­vices Ombuds­man are to be car­ried out in private, in terms of the Scot­tish Pub­lic Ser­vices Ombuds­man Act 2002. This helps pre­vent any pre­ju­dice to the con­fid­en­ti­al­ity of our invest­ig­a­tions. Accord­ingly, we ask recip­i­ents to respect this pri­vacy. This does not affect the rights of recip­i­ents to seek leg­al advice in rela­tion to this com­plaint. We also ask that recip­i­ents respect the pri­vacy of our staff. Where appro­pri­ate, recip­i­ents are reminded of their oblig­a­tions under Data Pro­tec­tion Legis­la­tion in rela­tion to the pro­cessing of per­son­al and sens­it­ive per­son­al data. If you want to know more about how we handle your own per­son­al inform­a­tion, you can read our Pri­vacy Notice on our web­site at https://​www​.spso​.org​.uk/​p​r​i​v​a​c​y​-​n​o​t​i​c​e​-​a​n​d​-​d​i​s​c​l​aimer or ask us for a copy.