Reporting a breach of planning control

How to report a breach

To ensure that we receive all the information required for us to accurately register an Enforcement complaint, please use the ‘Report unauthorised development’ form which can be accessed here.

You should not submit any reports of unauthorised development directly to an officer on-site, over the telephone or via email. The council do however understand that not all customers are able to submit a complaints form and the team will support customers by gathering information where necessary.

Before submitting a complaint, we strongly advise you to check whether the development or activity already has planning permission. You can check this using our online planning register. You can search using the address of the land or property if you know it or use the map to search.

Planning Enforcement Complaints can often cause friction between neighbours. We recommend attempting to find an amicable solution with your neighbour before contacting the council.

Officer’s will only usually investigate alleged breaches of the planning legislation that are the subject of the complaint. Should you wish Officer’s to investigate multiple alleged breaches of the planning legislation, then all of these need to be included within the complaint. Please be advised that complaints that are too vague in their nature may not be registered as a complaint and would therefore not be investigated.

If the council intend to prosecute or seek an injunction, we may ask you to supply a formal written statement.What information is required

• Your name and contact details. We will keep your identity safe and act within the law, however, in order to avoid malicious complaints, you must give us your name and address. You will also need to supply an email address if you would like to be updated.
• The address or location of the site of the alleged breach.
• The reason you believe there is a breach of planning control.
• The harm the development is causing to you, or to the character of the area.
• The date that the alleged breach began, whether it is continuing, or if it has been completed.
• The name and address of the person/company/developer causing a breach if you know it.
• Photographs of the issue.

How we will communicate with you as a complainant

Please do not contact us for an update during the investigation. As defined under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the specific information relating to the enforcement case would contain personal data, and we are unable to share this information. This, alongside the complexity of the legislation we are required to consider, means that investigations can take some time. We are therefore unable to provide regular updates on what is happening in individual cases during our investigation.

We aim to investigate and respond to complaints in an efficient and timely manner, providing updates at key stages of the investigation to ensure fairness and compliance with data protection law. Where we are unable to complete an investigation within the timescales advised under ‘Complaint Priorities’ and an investigation has been open for more than 6 months, we will aim to provide a general progress update to you. Please note that updates are dependent on officer workload and may not always be possible, particularly in cases where there are multiple interested parties.

Once we finish the investigation, we will provide a summary of our findings to the individual(s) who reported the matter to us.