Amended applications – Helping Local Authorities understand the changes made 

Once an application has been received by a Local Authority, an amendment may be needed. Both the applicant/agent and the Local Authority can instigate this: 

• Applicant/Agent initiated – wants to update proposal (e.g. revised plans) or make a correction (e.g. details were accidentally omitted) 

• Local Authority initiated – needs applicant/agent to resolve a validation issue (e.g. incorrect fee or missing/incorrect information) 

Guidance for applicants and agents on making an amendment is available on the site. 

In all cases, we advise that parties should contact each other regarding the required changes to ensure they will be acceptable and adequately address the reason(s) for making the amendment.

Detailed information on the changes made

As part of the implementation of our location feature, we reviewed how best to highlight to Local Authorities that the site boundary or location plan had been updated. 

To this end, and in consideration of the feedback we’ve received on the processing of amendments, V2+ submissions now contain an additional ‘amendment summary’ PDF document, including: 

• Summary details of the application 
• ‘Before and after’ details where changes have been made to application and fee calculator questions and values 
• If the site/other boundary data has been updated 
• Details of any supporting documents that have been added, updated or deleted. 

This is the first deliverable from a wider end-to-end review and forthcoming package of improvements around amendments. It is intended to benefit all parties by making the process more efficient. 

By providing a PDF file in the first instance as a lowest common denominator, we are confident that all Local Authorities will be able to utilise the information to assist in identification of the details that have been updated in amended submissions. 

We are also exploring how best to provide this as standardised data so it can be acted on automatically by Local Authority development management IT systems, including how we can improve integration with these systems to provide a better overall user experience. 

Guidance note on application amendments 

We have published a guidance note for Local Authorities covering the above in more detail and to help establish a common understanding of how the amendment process works on Planning Portal (e.g. what can and can’t be changed) so applicants and agents can be directed to use it as required. 

Read the guidance note here.

We will keep this guidance note updated as we continue to deliver improvements to the process.