Help us improve the Planning Portal
We are undertaking research with Portal users to help improve our delivery of content and services and in the proper spirit of engagement we’re looking for architects, surveyors, planning consultants and builders/small developers in the Bristol area to help.
The purpose of the research is to improve our understanding of how the planning and building practitioners among you use the Internet and other resources to support your professional activities. The research will include a short interview at your place of work and you’ll also be asked to keep an online diary. We will support you with the diary entries and any other questions throughout the two-week period.
At the end of the research there will be a closing interview for an informal, general discussion around your diary entries and online activity over the course of the study.
Ideally, we are looking for people who use the Planning Portal regularly and will be shortly submitting planning applications electronically.
This is a great opportunity to influence the way we deliver and to make friends at your friendly local Portal.
If you are interested in taking part, please contact: christabel.pattison@planningportal.gov.uk
Planning Portal Blog 
The Portal will only improve when the Portal actually listen to what is needed and deliver the users requirements. We have been trying to help with this for many months but our feedback is falling on deaf ears.
Stuart,
thanks for your feedback.
We do take the enormous amount of feedback we get to our support desk very seriously. However as I’m sure you’ll realise there is a need to thoroughly assess, consult, prioritise and plan in to a manageable release schedule any changes, in particular any that affect 1App.
Every suggestion goes through this process and you have my assurance none are ignored.
My colleagues will reply separately today on your particular suggestions.
Chris
I have trouble with some of the forms for PAs if I use Safari = particularly the pages on hazardous waste!
Seems to work OK on Firefox, but any comments as to why Safari doesnt work properly?
Hi Tim,
IApp should work with Safari however we are aware of some occasional issues. As I’m sure you’ll appreciate we have to prioritise our work and unfortrunately as less than 5% of our customers use Safari it takes a lower precedent. That said our ongoing infrastructure re-build will we hope resolve any current issues.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Chris
Hi,
We have spent a massive amount of time this week struggling to upload information on the online system. I started work on an application yesterday morning, gave up yesterday afternoon, started at 815 this morning and am still trying this evening at 16.30, and it still isn’t finished.
Quite frankly I reckon it would have been easier to book tickets for Led Zeppelin given the number of times we have been bounced out of the system.
What is going wrong, is it us, is it the links, is it too much demand or what??? We have tried it using FireFox and Explorer. FireFox was marginally better.
These problems are eating up the fee we are earning and making us look foolish to our client.
Help and advice would be appreciated.
Hi Simon,
I’m really sorry you’ve had difficulties. We’re not aware of any issue that would have affected the Planning Portal’s performance or availability on the 1st or 2nd of July. Although there were issues with the Planning Portal on both the 29th and 30th June which did impact availability, in both cases these issues lasted no longer than an hour so should not have affected users throughout the day.
If you could specify whereabouts on the Planning Portal you were and what actions you were taking when you encountered these problems, then we will be happy to investigate further (to aid our investigation, please can you also advise of any error message that appeared)
For future reference, should you have any further technical concerns about the Portal, then please do not hesitate in contacting our Support team either via e-mail (support@planningportal gsi.gov.uk) or via telephone (0117 372 8200 -This number is available from 8AM until 6PM, Monday to Friday and is charged at the standard rate). The Planning Portal Service Desk do their best to respond all e-mails within one working day