UNSATISFACTORY responses by Cheshire East Council to issues surrounding planning complaints has put its planning department firmly in the spotlight.

An audit of disgruntled residents and developers saw 45 of them taking their issues to the Local Government Ombudsman.

The annual figures left Cheshire East as the second worst planning department across the country among 363 local authorities, when it came to satisfactorily handling complaints.

The overall figures for Cheshire East Council showed a total of 117 complaints were made in 2016/2017 which placed the authority in 36th place when it came to the largest number of complaints referred.

Reacting to the report, Wilmslow Cllr Rod Menlove said: “As a councillor I am not informed by Cheshire East of the number of complaints going through to the ombudsman.

“On the face of it these figures seem too high for comfort and I will be asking in future for councillors to be kept informed about all complaints going to the ombudsman and their content.”

Ombudsman Michael King said: “We greatly value our relationships with council complaints officers, our single contact points at each authority. To support them in their roles, we have published a Manual for Councils, setting out in detail what we do and how we investigate the complaints we receive.

“Our training programme is one of the ways we use the outcomes of complaints to promote wider service improvements and learning.

“We delivered an ambitious programme of 75 courses during the year, training over 800 council staff and more 400 care provider staff.”

As the Guardian went to press we were awaiting a response form Cheshire East Council.