Gavin Lawlor

And if there's any planning history, you'll see it there and you can read the planning documents and see whether they did or did not get planning permission.

If there's no evidence of any planning history, the correct thing to do then is write into the enforcement section, into the council and make an official complaint.

Councils don't go out looking for planning problems.

They tend to react when people make it known to them that there's an issue.

And so that's very simple.

It seems like all the evidence is there.

It's online.

They simply point to it.

It's very simple.

Most planning authorities just equates to filling out a form and making the submission into the planning authority and they'll take it from there.

Generally, unfortunately, like everything else in planning, the enforcement departments are inundated and in different authorities have different resourcing.

So generally, there's a legal requirement for them to act within six months of a complaint.

And generally speaking, it can take up to that before they go and have a look, do the investigations.

And the next step...

Some planning authorities will immediately send out a warning letter if they believe that the issue is of significance.

And that's just writing to the property owner saying, we have a complaint.

We believe you've done something wrong.

Please make a change.

You can.

You can go to the...