If you’re submitting applications over the next couple of weeks you should check which days your LPA is open over the festive period.
A few LPAs have been in touch to confirm their opening hours. However, as there is no set closing day schedule across the country, I thought I’d remind you to check your LPA’s website when submitting your application.
It’s very likely that most will be closed from Christmas Day until Monday 30th December and therefore applications submitted over this period may not be registered and validated until the offices re-open.
So Christmas has rolled around once more and before we all charge off in search of sherry, Christmas pud and Settlers I thought I’d reflect on the year, offer up some key stats and share some thoughts on what 2014 might hold.
As ever we haven’t rested on our laurels. Budgets may be tighter than they have been in the past but we’ve managed to get continued investment from DCLG in the Portal service to improve and maintain it.
Some of the key work we’ve been involved in during 2013:
- We made improvement to the form chooser to make the service easier to use for both first-time users and seasoned pros.
- We introduced new changes to the conservation consent process, ownership certificates and CIL forms.
- We reached a key milestone in our Smarter Planning campaign in July.
- We also delivered (at pace!) PDF versions of the new Prior Approval forms for larger extensions, business-to-residential change of use and more.
- Our service desk responded to over 13,500 calls and emails since the start of the year.
- We’ve supported the design, development and delivery of DCLG’s National Planning Practice Guidance website, a really worthwhile project and a big improvement for the planning system.
- Behind the scenes there have been technical upgrades a-plenty to keep the service ticking over as we deal with the ever rising tide of traffic and applications being submitted…
… which brings us neatly around to some stats for the year.
- Over 360,000 applications were submitted through the Planning Portal – an increase of approximately 15 per cent on 2012
- There were 1.95 million downloads of Building Regulations Approved Documents in 2013, an increase of approximately 26 per cent from 2012
- We reported over 13.3 million visits to the website, an increase of approximately 25 per cent from 2012 – this is equivalent to the population of Ecuador, or Zimbabwe (according to Wikipedia).
- All those electronic applications resulted in savings of around about 55,296kg (around 55 tons) of paper. To put that in some seasonal perspective this is the equivalent weight of over 300 reindeer.
- A member of the Portal team won a gold medal representing England in the British and Irish Cross Country Championship – well done again, John!
Finally, came the decision to kick off the commercialisation of the Portal to drive further investment and service improvement, expect more on that in the New Year.
I can tell by our traffic stats that you’re all still beavering away submitting applications. As a result we increased our bandwidth last night to cope with the upsurge in submissions (more than 1,500 yesterday) and were expecting to peak at around 2,000 applications in a day before the weekend. Thanks to IBM for stepping in at short notice.
And finally a heartfelt thank you to all of you who have used the Portal in the last 12 months and to those of you who have taken the time to contribute to the blog.
Happy Xmas
Chris
We will be taking the Planning Portal down this evening for some essential maintenance.
The site will be down this evening (17 December) between 20:00 and 23:30 (GMT).
We apologise in advance for any inconvenience this causes you.
Last year I had an enthusiastic response on this blog when I asked you to share your best planning-related smartphone apps.
We had great feedback, with dozens of suggestions for iOS and Android apps. Feel free to review add suggestions to that list.
I noticed via our Twitter feed this week that a Portal customer had recommended a compression tool called SmallPDF for reducing the file size of PDF documents. Read more…
Most of the application data submitted via the Portal is sent directly to the LPA’s planning IT system. Meanwhile, the plans and drawings are retrieved automatically and added to the authority’s document management system.
Following validation and registration, all the information is then made available online via the LPA’s planning register.
We’ve recently had an increasing number of LPAs contact us about how the naming of supporting attachments could be improved to reduce the amount of time it takes for them to re-index and re-name the attachments they are receiving. Read more…
As you probably know, in the summer DCLG published a prospectus inviting expressions of interest on taking on the future operation of the Planning Portal.
DCLG has organised an event on 10th December to hear directly from planning agents about what they and their clients would expect from the future Planning Portal, as well as their views on the future options set out in the prospectus.
Any professionals who use the Planning Portal in their current work are welcome to attend, whether submitting applications themselves or managing others that do, or just using the Portal for information and help.
The event will take place:
- Date: 10 December 2013
- Time: 14:00 – 16:30
- Venue: City of London, 80 Basinghall Street, EC2V 5AR
Places are limited, so to make sure your voice is heard, book now by emailing DCLG.
** If you have any comments you’d like to make folks, please direct them to DCLG direct.
Daily application submissions via the Planning Portal (2011-13) (Click on the graph for a bigger view)
I thought I’d share the above graph with you. It represents the number of applications submitted via the Portal on weekdays and weekends over the last three years.
What’s particularly striking is the sudden (and sustained) increase in applications around the start of May 2013.
We’ve been scratching our collective heads about what could have caused this increase and we haven’t come to a definitive conclusion.
We’re aware of indications that the market is rising. We also know that the number of applications submitted via the Planning Portal continues to increase year on year. (For 2012-13 the year-on-year increase was 16 per cent – up from 14 per cent in 2011-12.) Read more…
You may have noticed an abundance of facial hair sprouting up all over the country in the last month as men take part in the annual Movember event.
In case you’re unaware, this is to raise vital funds and awareness for prostate and testicular cancer and mental health.
This year we have four members of the team growing impressive moustaches for a good cause:
- Scott ‘Freddie Mercury’ Alford – our head of LPA engagement
- Dan ‘Spinal Tap’ Alton – our stats man
- Toby ‘The Thumb’ Clemenson– the calming voice of our service desk
- Stuart ‘Sailor’ Mockford – our head of corporate development
You can check out their impressive facial hair on their Mo Bro page. You can also sponsor them – they’ve currently raised £290 for worthwhile causes.
I’m pleased to share a guest post by the Planning Portal’s head of LPA engagement Scott Alford…
Last week we held a tree event in partnership with the London Borough planning authorities and the London Tree Officers Association (LTOA).
The London Boroughs have been working with the Planning Portal to look at ways to improve the planning and tree services they provide and encourage all works to trees applications to be submitted online using the Planning Portal.
The event was for agents who currently submit on paper and by post and a varied audience turned up, including sole practitioners, family-run businesses to national tree companies that deal with a range of tree services. Read more…
John Danahay (race number 5029) holding off the opposition.
I’d like to offer up my congratulations to our account manager John Danahay who last weekend won a gold medal as part of the England team in the British and Irish Cross Country Championship.
Despite being the tender age of 51, John has not only managed to meet the demands of our Local Authority and corporate customers but has snuck lots of training in for the event in which the top performers in this age-group are running 32 minute 10ks. As some one of a similar (older) age who has just taken up running I can’t even imagine going that fast.
We’re all massively proud of him.
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