LGO criticises council for doubling price previously agreed for sale of land

The Local Government Ombudsman has sharply criticised a council after it more than doubled the price payable for a narrow strip of land that was just seven inches at its widest point.

In its report, the LGO said the complainant (Ms J) was building an extension and had approached Barnsley Council about selling the land in question, as she wanted it for a path to the front and back of her home.

The local authority had originally agreed to sell the strip to her for £2,950. But before the sale was completed, a council officer visited the site and decided the extension was being built on the land.

The officer told Ms J that the land would have to be revalued, and warned that the extension, which was only partly built, might have to be demolished.

Barnsley then decided that the triangular piece of land had a greater value for Ms J than if it were just used for a path, claiming it should be considered as building land. The council asked Ms J to pay £7,000. The LGO said this effectively valued the small triangle of land at £4,000.

Ms J complained to her MP and the Ombudsman. However, officers at Barnsley insisted they had followed proper valuation practice and the council's standard policy and procedure when someone encroached onto its land.

They suggested that they could not make any exception to the standard policy and procedure on encroachment because that would introduce “bias”. The officers added that the “value placed on the land is seen as a figure which could reasonably be obtained given that the other option for resolving the situation would be to remove the gable wall and the extension and rebuild it within the curtilage”.

The Ombudsman, Anne Seex, said Ms J:  “…justifiably feels a strong sense of outrage that the Council should have exploited her situation to try to obtain what she describes as an ‘extortionate’ price.”

Seex suggested that it was inconceivable that Barnsley could have obtained any value for the land from anyone else. She also described as “reprehensible” Barnsley’s claim that Ms J had inflicted delay on herself by complaining.

The LGO concluded that the council had acted with maladministration in deciding that Ms J’s extension encroached onto the land it had agreed to sell to her and to increase the price by £4,000 because it:

• “did not have regard to the widely acknowledged margin of error on drawn plans of plus or minus almost a metre
• did not consider the particular circumstances of this case when setting the increased price (which includes Ms J’s means and that the land has no value to anyone else) and so has not properly addressed what price can ‘reasonably be obtained’, and
• fettered its discretion by rigidly applying its policy and procedure on encroachment and not considering whether to make an exception.”

Barnsley had taken counsel’s advice after receiving Seex’s report in draft and initially sought to resist the Ombudsman’s findings. It argued that the LGO had misunderstood proper valuation practice, adding that the basis of the council’s valuation was not the value to it but to the purchaser. However, Seex concluded that nothing that in the counsel’s opinion would cause her to make any substantial changes to her finding and conclusions.

Just before the LGO’s report was to be published, Barnsley was told by the District Valuer that its approach to the valuation of the triangle was incorrect and the value of the land was less than it had asked for. The council has now told the Ombudsman that it accepted that Ms J had been caused an injustice and that a remedy was warranted.

The LGO recommended that the council should apologise to Ms J and transfer all the land to her without cost. Seex also recommended that the authority pay the complainant £1,500 in recognition of the distress caused to her, and the costs arising from the delay to completing her extension.

The council has told the Ombudsman that the remedies were acceptable in principle but believed that it could not directly dispose of the land for no consideration. In her report, the LGO said: “I am sure it will find a suitable mechanism to achieve the same result.”

Andrew Frosdick, Borough Secretary at Barnsley, said: "The council has received the Ombudsman's report and, while accepting the advice of the District Valuer and also that some compensation should be paid to the complainant, there are other aspects of the report that the council does not necessarily accept.

"The report will be discussed formally in March at a meeting of the council's Audit Committee where it will be determined if these elements of the report will be subject to further formal comment."