Wirral Council apologises for blunder that saw family living in caravan for a year

Jun 23 2010 by Liam Murphy, Birkenhead News

WIRRAL Council is to pay out more than £5,000 in compensation after a blunder by planners led to a family living in a caravan for an extra year.

The authority has since reviewed its planning procedures after admitting it had accidentally approved the wrong application.

A report to the council’s standards committee, which meets next Monday, recommends the authority pay compensation to the complainants.

It follows a complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman which carried out an investigation.

The report to the standards committee said: “When considering the planning application in 2007, it appears that the officer inadvertently considered the previously superseded plan from 2001.”

It added: “This led to his report containing a factual inaccuracy.”

Due to a legal challenge in 2008 to the planning permission the complainants stopped work on the building until they had an approved set of plans in mid 2009.