Countdown to the Millionth Application – Day 7

By 9.20 this morning we have processed 997,130 online planning applications.

I can appreciate that this may not be as exciting for many of you as it is for me but the millionth online planning application represents a huge milestone in the Portals evolution.

When we set out to help e-enable the planning system many believed this was an impossible task. At the time only a very small number of LPAs were contemplating e forms and even fewer had the money or resources to make it happen. 

Then as we began to look at creating a unified set of forms that later became 1App we calculated that there were around 12,000 local variations of the forms across England and Wales. This was no issue if you only submitted locally, but for the many thousands of businesses that submitted applications regionally or even nationally it presented a huge problem.

Whilst 1App may be far from perfect I contend that it has helped improve the system and delivered huge efficiencies. I know this to be true from the regular positive feedback I receive.

The millionth application is an opportunity for us to reflect on our journey and take a moment to celebrate our success which  I think this is more important than ever right now.

We haven’t done this by ourselves and I’m not claiming the credit for the Portal alone, but for all the LPAs and Agents who saw this was the way forward and supported us and helped make e-planning a reality and for our policy colleagues thay have helped us keep 1App relevant and up to date.

Todays Statistic
If you were to lay out every piece of paper saved by applying online the surface area would be approximately 1,996km2 – that’s enough paper to cover West Sussex or Bristol, Swindon, Greater London and Nottingham combined.