Jad Adams has exposed in the London Times the background to decisions by the Local Government Ombudsman.

A case that I recently took to the Ombudsman involved a change in a planning order. He ruled that changes were completely beyond his powers, despite the Council having admitted in writing to me that the change was of critical importance to me. The Planning Officer wrote apologizing that "you were not made aware of this critical change to the application" and that "you were not given the opportunity to express your concern (with regard to the provision of fences and the protection of your privacy)".

Amazingly, the Ombudsman eventually ruled in favour of the Council on the purely technical grounds that he had no power to challenge the discretion of Planning Officers over changes to planning applications.

Have you ever heard such nonsense? My constituency MP is trying to persuade the Minister to amend the legislation to allow the Ombudsman to deal with changes in planning applications. Cynic that I am, it does not make me very hopeful.

Jad Adams points out that while the Ombudsman's office is staffed with so many ex-local government officials, it is not surprising that they find in favour of complainants in only 1.6% of cases. Like medics they close ranks; unlike economists (such as me), who publicly and healthily disagree, sometimes violently!