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Making a planning related complaint

Planning NI aims to provide a quality service to all customers and takes complaints very seriously. Planning NI has recently changed its complaints process and will make every effort to resolve your complaint as soon as possible.

What is a complaint?

A complaint is any oral or written expression of dissatisfaction by any person made about the service received as well as actions or inactions, for example:

  • how your enquiries or your correspondence were handled
  • how your application was processed
  • the contact you had with staff

How and when to make a complaint

A complaint can be formal or informal and should be made to the relevant Planning Manager within six months of you first becoming aware of the matters you are complaining about. Planning may agree to waive the six month time limit if there is good reason why the complaint could not be made within that timescale.

Informal complaints

Staff in the relevant Area Planning Office will be able to deal with most complaints informally and quickly by telephone. They aim to respond to informal verbal complaints within three working days.

Formal Stage 1

If you wish to make a formal complaint, you should put this in writing to the relevant Planning Manager in the Area Offices or in Strategic Planning Division. It would be helpful if you were to detail the nature of the complaint and explain how you consider they should have done the job better.

The Manager will investigate your complaint and will respond to you within 15 working days and will also give you details of the Director to contact if you remain unhappy with the response.

Formal Stage 2

Following the response from the Manager (Stage 1), you can write to the relevant Director  who will review your complaint and respond directly to you.

In these formal stages Planning will:

  • acknowledge your complaint within three working days of receipt
  • aim to provide a full reply within 15 working days

If there is going to be a delay they will let you know the reason and when you may expect to receive a reply.

If you are still not satisfied

If you are still not satisfied after receiving a response from the relevant Director, you can ask an Assembly Member (MLA) to sponsor your complaint to the Assembly Ombudsman for Northern Ireland.

The Ombudsman can investigate complaints against government departments and their agencies. The service is free and totally independent. The Ombudsman will expect you to have used the complaints procedure before he will accept a complaint. Contact details can be found below:

Assembly Ombudsman for Northern Ireland
Progressive House
33 Wellington Place
Belfast
BT1 6HN

Or you may write to:

The Ombudsman
Freepost BEL 1478
Belfast, BT1 6BR

Appealing the decision on your application

If you are an applicant dissatisfied with a decision on your application, there is a separate procedure for appealing to the Planning Appeals Commission:

There is currently no system in Northern Ireland providing for third parties to appeal against a planning decision.

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