Latest updates to the Planning Portal 

We’re pleased to announce the following fixes and improvements to our planning application service, which will be put in place this evening, Thursday 3 November 2022.

Registration and log in 

Messaging around the registration journey is being updated to assist unregistered users. 

Starting an application 

The guidance around the process to create an application is being updated to better inform users about the actions to be taken and options available.

Answering application questions 

Applicant/Agent addresses will have an additional, optional, ‘County’ field to ensure that auto-populated addresses are correctly ordered. 

Fees and payment 

‘Regulation 3’ applications will have an option to calculate a £0 fee and bypass the payment process, allowing the fee to be handled internally by the Local Authority. 

Other user reported issues in the fee calculation process will also be resolved, including the inability to enter ‘0’ values for some floorspace fields, and the formatting of the generated PDF fee summary. 

Application submission/retraction 

We have reviewed a range of issues where users had reported errors when trying to submit or retract their applications. Common issues linked to validation of specific question fields will be resolved, which should significantly reduce the number of errors encountered.  

Local Authority functions 

Local Authorities will be able to set their own individual file size limits for supporting documents from 5-30Mb depending on the limits of their own systems. 

Previously transferred applications will be able to be re-downloaded by Local Authority IT systems as required, and manual downloads directly from the application list will function more consistently. 

The reported issues with the sorting of Local Authority application lists will be resolved. 

User interface, and device/browser compliance 

Alignment issues with our date picker in the Firefox browser will be resolved. 

Known issues with the display of certain elements in the fee calculator and projects areas on mobile devices will be resolved. 

Screen flickering, which could occur when fee calculations were updated, will be eliminated. 

Support and admin functions 

We are introducing additional functions for our support team, to allow them to quickly access more detailed applications information, and resolve more account and application issues directly.