Durham Council Unitary Authority change on the Planning Portal
On Wednesday 5 February 2014 Durham Council will integrate their new planning back-office system with the Portal’s online application service. This effectively means that the existing seven area offices and the county on the Portal will be removed and replaced with a single Durham Council authority.
This change means Durham Council will no longer have to manually retrieve online applications on receipt and re-key the information into their IT systems for registration and validation. This will help them realise greater efficiency and resource savings and enable other planning processes to be streamlined.
The Durham Council unitary authority was created in April 2009 following a Local Government Review where many councils were merged.
This change will not affect the submission of applications to Durham Council by applicants. However, applicants may notice a slight name change of the authority as reference to the area offices will be removed.
Once the integration is in place we hope to work in partnership with Durham Council to promote online application submission and encourage those who submit by paper to adopt the online service.
Planning Portal Blog 
This LPA is not advising people of the chages they are implementing, are they missing a part of the system to advise users? the chages are relitivley small but will impact on the system of planning over all, as planning should be more uniform in the area.
Durham County Planning Director has advised all Parish & Town Council’s, within the Authority, of the New Planning changes. Although some people may not agree with some planning functions, the new Unitary Authority (particularly the Planning Department) has shown that it is willing to work with the Public. I know, having suffered at the hands of the old disgusting system. Talk to them, they are always ready to listen and learn and help.