Countdown to the new Planning Portal
With development progressing well, we recently invited our planning professional customers to take part in the user acceptance testing (UAT) of the new Planning Portal website – the response was nothing short of remarkable.
Emails asking to take part in the testing started arriving within minutes of sending the invitation. With more than 80 per cent of planning applications in England and Wales being submitted via the Portal perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised but it was hugely encouraging to receive such a rapid and enthusiastic response from our customers.
We had responses from a diverse range of business sectors, ranging from the largest and most well-known architectural practices and planning consultancies to sole practitioners.
Extensive user testing of the new Portal is scheduled to start shortly when UAT participants will be free to create, assemble and submit as many applications of any type they wish. Testers will be able to freely comment and provide detailed feedback on the site.
The purpose of UAT is to help ensure the Portal meets the increasing requirements of the planning industry prior to its launch in the Autumn.
Planning Portal Blog 
I must of missed this invitation, is it too late to participate?
Hi Penny. No problem. I’ll pass on your details on and ask the team to get in touch. Sarah
If moving to a new Portal, one major improvement would be the ability to change the form once submitted. We get a number of applications submitted on the wrong form, and the only way to resolve it without duplication of applications on our back office system is for them to complete a pdf or paper copy.
Hi Chris, not for the initial delivery of the new site but this is one for consideration for future releases – we’ve had other requests for it.
Lot of chest banging but………..It would be good if you could also improve support service for LA’s. We would like to see a dedicated contact stream and an escalation process for unsatisfactory replies.
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve not been happy with our service, Roger. One of our Account Managers will be in touch asap.
I too missed the invite – after using the Portal pretty well since it’s inception I’d love to have some input into Portal 2.0 (or whatever it’ll be called!)
Thanks Andy. I’ll also pass your details on! Sarah
I’m afraid this judgement will be an impediment against the development of small sites (up to 10) which will affect the small builder. Large developers are not interested in the development of small sites in which the small builder plays such an important role. We have planning approval for 24 properties in which no major developer were interested. An appraisal of the site shows a return of just 8.9% on 3 years work. ( site includes 8 affordable, £60,000 open space and £5400 libraries contribution.. total additional outlay, £600,400 ) .
I also missed the invitation and would like to join the UAT.