Bristol City Council has apologised after being rapped by watchdogs for “unreasonable delays” in investigating illegal bedsits. The Local Government Ombudsman upheld a complaint by a resident who was left “frustrated and disappointed” that the local authority took too long to launch enforcement action against many suspected unlawful student digs in his neighbourhood.
A council meeting was told a set of remedies to redress the “injustice” had been agreed with the ombudsman, including beefing up the team that probes alleged breaches of planning regulations for houses in multiple occupation (HMOs). The authority was also told to apologise to the complainant and monitor and review its plan to deal with a backlog of enforcement cases to ensure it is adequately resourced, along with reporting ongoing progress and the ruling to the cross-party growth & regeneration scrutiny commission.
The ombudsman’s report said: “Mr X complained the council was taking too long to investigate complaints about unlawful HMOs in its area. We found fault because there was unreasonable delay in enforcement investigations.
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“The council has agreed to a remedy to resolve the injustice caused by the fault we found. Mr X lives in an area near where there is a large demand for student accommodation. Mr X says that in recent years, there has been a rapid growth of HMOs in the area.
“He said he reported a large number of houses he thought were unlawful to the council’s planning enforcement department but became frustrated with the lack of progress.” The report said that in response to the complaint, the council accepted there was a problem caused by several factors including a backlog of cases during the pandemic, limited staff resources, a sudden increase in case numbers and the responsibility for monitoring small HMOs switching departments from environmental health to planning enforcement.
It said: “The council said that a planning officer had been seconded to the planning enforcement team and had begun working on the backlog of HMO cases. The council has accepted that there are unacceptable delays in dealing with new HMO cases, resulting in its current backlog. This delay is fault.
“The fault has caused frustration and disappointment to Mr X who has been waiting for the outcome of the enforcement investigations. Mr X said he is glad the council has already begun to resolve the problem, and he looks forward to continued improvements and getting updates from the council on his planning enforcement complaints.”
City council head of development control Gary Collins told the commission meeting on Monday, March 28, that the resident’s complaints about unlawful HMOs in May 2020 were among a “large volume” that had built up at the authority at the time when there was pressure on resources two months into the pandemic. He said: “Within the decision the ombudsman recognises planning enforcement is a discretionary power and that formal action is only required when that would be a proportionate response to the alleged breach of planning control, and that the duty for weighing that up is for local authorities to look at the harm being caused by the breach and whether planning permission for that breach would be granted anyway.
“It also encourages local authorities to resolve local issues through negotiation and dialogue. However, the ombudsman said it’s important there is not an unreasonable delay in the enforcement process because enforcement effectively maintains public confidence in the wider planning system.
“So the ombudsman finding was that there had been unacceptable delays and this had caused frustration and disappointment to the complainant.” Mr Collins said it was important that the parallel but separate processes of HMO licensing and HMO planning enforcement were as aligned as possible and that the two teams were working closely on this.
He said: “We were aware of the backlog that had started to build so we have moved one officer from the current householder planning application team to the planning enforcement team to start dealing with some of the wider backlog but also to focus on this particular area of work. We now have a list of cases and a tracker which we will use to monitor and ensure progress.
“At the moment we have 51 cases relating to alleged HMOs in breach of planning permission, of which 13 have now been visited and 12 of those have received follow-up correspondence from us. We’ve received eight responses in relation to those and eight additional assessments have been made by the officer. It’s a belated but decent start of working through that backlog.”
