The day-to-day planning operations of South Oxfordshire DC and Vale of White Horse DC are still being affected by last week’s devastating office fire.
The two planning authorities (who shared the same office) asked us to communicate the following update to applicants:
LATEST UPDATE: Monday 19 January
Our website is now live again following the major fire at our main offices in Crowmarsh last week.
However, some parts of our website work on systems that we are still restoring and might not work as normal, for example online application forms and reporting. Also, as our phone service isn’t completely restored, some phone numbers may not work.
In the next day or two we hope to be able to provide you with a more detailed update on what services we have available through our website.
It will probably take a week before we can restore our IT systems, so we’re kindly asking residents to please only get in touch if they have a genuine emergency. If you do have an emergency, please call 01235 520202.
Planning is the main area of our website affected by the fire and we are asking residents not to submit any planning applications until further notice. Our planning application register is currently not available so you are unable to view or comment on existing applications on our website. We will provide an update early next week.
Our thoughts are with those planning colleagues affected by the fire.
In case you missed it, DCLG has challenged local authorities and other parties to come up with new and innovative ways of communicating statutory notices.
If you can think of a better way of advertising a planning application than attaching it to a lamppost then you have until 28th January to submit a proposal to DCLG to apply to take part in a pilot.
The article on GOV.uk states: “The pilots will explore how we change statutory notices so that they reach more people, are easier to read, give greater visibility and transparency to big issues and reduce costs in a sustainable way.”
More information and an application form are available on GOV.uk
Last year we added a useful tool to help applicants and agents easily identify the payment options local authorities support when submitting online.
We have now updated the tool. The latest version of the LPA Payment Options Checker is available to download from the Planning Portal’s Useful Tools page (you’ll need Excel installed).
This should help agents plan which payment method to use as the application service doesn’t tell you the different methods LPAs support up front.
Hopefully this will help to manage customer expectations around registration and validation.
Non-receipt of the fee remains one of the top reasons for LPAs invalidating online applications. This is most common where the application and all supporting documents are sent online but the fee is paid by cheque.
Receipt of the fee is a requirement for validation and due to postal delays there’s no guarantee LPAs will receive it in good time causing administrative delays.
To help with this validation issue we have been encouraging LPAs to support additional payment options, including payment by telephone and via the council website.
Both these options let the applicant or agent pay quickly and efficiently, which in turn lets the LPA register and validate applications – a win-win situation.
Finally, a request to LPAs: please check the payment options you support.
It would be great if you could spend a couple of minutes checking that your payment options are correct including the cheque payment address.
There are still quite a few LPAs without a cheque payment address which could mean chasing payment or cheques being sent to the wrong address – with lots of office moves recently we don’t want the cheque going astray.
An instruction on how to update your details can be found on the Planning Portal.
Happy New Year to everyone.
Planning gets a lot of stick in the press and from many quarters but what often goes unheralded is the leading role it has taken in the shift from paper to electronic public services. Very close to 90% of all planning applications are now submitted online, which is a fantastic achievement for all concerned, from agents and applicants to LPAs and indeed ourselves.
Clearly there is much to be improved, but I have every confidence that we will be driving positive change throughout the year to come and beyond. Before ploughing on though here are a smattering of statistics that illustrate the continuing growth in digital submission.
Online Planning Applications in 2014 = 438,551
Online Planning Applications in 2013 = 362,882
That’s an increase of 20.9%
Total Website Visits in 2014 = 15,039,298
Total Website Visits in 2013 = 13,450.768
That’s an increase of 11.8%
(It’s worth remembering that every visit to the Planning Portal website for information or guidance is a phone call, visit or interaction with a Local Authority prevented – and thereby money saved for LA’s)
Total Building Regulations Downloads in 2014 = 2,251,829
Total Building Regulations Downloads in 2013 = 1,942,807
That’s an increase of 15.9%
We’re expecting 2015 to be a momentus year for us all at the Portal and we are really looking forward to getting our teeth into the challenges ahead.
All our very best to all of you.
Chris
Here we are again, the Christmas party beckons and it’s time to reflect on the year gone by.
As you’ll no doubt be aware it’s been an interesting year during which I spent a few months on the outside, looking in at the business and talking to customers and supporters about the future of the Portal.
It was extremely gratifying to hear so many good things about our work and our people, from right across the industry.
Ultimately, we weren’t successful in our bid to run the Portal but we gave it a good shot and learned a lot in the process. Now like everyone else we wait to hear what the future holds for the Portal and we’re truly excited (and a little nervous) about the prospect of taking the business to the next level with a new partner.
None of this excitement prevented us from concentrating on the day job though, as the team continued to deliver improvements to the system and in support of policy throughout the year.
Earlier in the year we pushed beyond our Ministerial target of 80% of planning applications online more than nine months ahead of time while in November we reached the heady milestone of our 2,000,000th online application.
I can honestly say that I have no idea what the next year will bring for the Planning Portal but at the very least I hope it brings you and your families all that you wish for.
Well ‘tis the season of goodwill so please enjoy our festive greeting and very best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year. (You may need to ‘play’ the presentation as it behaves differently in different browers!)
Happy Xmas
Chris
Our technical partners will need to take the Portal offline on Tuesday 16th December between 05:00 and 07:00.
This is for some essential maintenance.
We’ve tried to pick a quiet time for Portal customers but I apologise if this causes any inconvenience.
Update 21.1.15: The NPCU have advised me that they have updated their interactive tool with data from the most recent quarter.
I thought I’d take a moment to highlight some of the good work that other teams in DCLG are doing to improve transparency in the planning system.
In October the National Planning Casework Unit (NPCU) launched an interactive map to showcase its data. The NPCU manages planning decisions on behalf of the Secretary of State for DCLG.
The interactive map shows the parts of the country and approximate location the NPCU has considered cases from and the decisions taken.
The data in the tool is based on decision data for referrals under the Consultation Direction 2009, Third Party Requests to Intervene, Compulsory Purchase Orders and Environmental Screening Directions from April 2014 onwards.
By releasing the data, the NCPU hopes to provide an open and accessible insight in its casework and increase the information available in the public domain. For future releases the NCPU is looking to increase the amount of data available, including on other case types.
The service forms part of DCLG’s OpenDataCommunities initiative to increase amount of data the public can access.
I first became aware of this wonderful building in March 2013 and ran a post on the plans and a subsequent update during construction.
There was a great deal of interest and comment on the posts at the time so I was pleased to see earlier this week that the building beat off stiff opposition to win an international award for high rise buildings.
Follow the link for more images and info.
I am truly disappointed to announce that the Planning Portal team have been unsuccessful in our bid to take on the future operation of the Portal as an employee-owned business.
The bid team of Allen, Scott and myself have now returned to the bosom of the Portal team and wrested back our previous roles.
I’d really like to thank all our supporters and partners for their backing and look forward to working with the future owner once the commercialisation process concludes.
In the meantime, I am not able to enter into any discussion about the ongoing process and would ask that you direct any questions to DCLG.
Next Friday (21 November) we will be rolling out some improvements to our planning application address services.
We are going to start using a new source of data, which is the same data source that LPAs use to identify site address information utilising the NLPG-equivalent (National Land and Property Gazetteer) data from OS AddressBase when users create planning applications.
The neat bit about using this data is that we can carry across the UPRN value (Unique Property Reference Number) which is used by the LPA to identify the property in the authority’s back office and GIS systems, speeding up the application process.
The update will also let us map county data more accurately, and the data will be updated every six weeks to capture any changes made by local authorities.
Applicants will also be able to create an application for addresses without a postcode more easily.
The change is going live on Friday 21 November between 05:00 and 07:00. This will require a site outage.
Planning Portal Blog 