The Planning Portal has added a ‘major development’ question to the online planning application process. This is to support future development work.
All users in England and Wales will now be asked to indicate whether their application is for a major development. The definition of what constitutes a major development is available in the ‘Help’ text.
The new question will be presented within the application chooser, once the applicant has selected the application type. The question will apply to all application forms that can be used to submit a major development. They are:
- 04. Full
- 05. Outline planning permission with some matters reserved
- 06. Outline planning permission with all matters reserved
- 07. Full and relevant demolition in a conservation
- 08. Full and listed building consent
- 09. Full and consent to display an advertisement(s)
- 10. Relevant demolition in a conservation area
- 23. Approval of reserved matters following outline approval
- 25. Removal or variation of a condition following grant of planning permission
- 27. Approval of details reserved by condition
Tree surgeons and arborists in London and the surrounding area are invited to attend our latest event on 13 November.
In recent months the London Borough planning authorities have been working with the Portal to improve the services they provide while reducing waste, costs and red tape.
The London Boroughs are now encouraging all applications for works to trees to be submitted online using the Portal. The event is being held to demonstrate the savings that can be made.
We’re especially encouraging those who currently submit on paper by post to attend – if you’re already submitting online you won’t get as much out of the day.
The event is free and sessions will include:
- How submitting tree applications online will save money and provide a competitive edge for you and your company
- A talk about the benefits one specialist tree company has realised through regularly submitting applications via the Portal
- A day in the life of a tree officer – offering an insight into a local authority tree officer’s working day
The event is taking place on Wednesday 13 November 2013. The venue is the Lord Mayor’s Reception Rooms, Westminster City Hall, 64 Victoria Street, London SW1E 6QP.
There are two sessions. The first session starts at 10am (registration from 9.30am) and finishes at 12.30pm. The second session starts at 1.30pm (registration at 1.00pm) and finishes at 4pm.
Places are limited so we advise you to register ASAP .
I hope you’ll forgive another blog post about payment and online planning applications. It’s something we spend a lot of time thinking about at the Portal and, as ever, I hope to provide a few more solutions with each post.
Last year we introduced an additional service for LPAs to help them manage which payment types they support for online applications.
This made it easier for LPAs to update their own information and configure different options when new payment types become available.
As part of our work with LPAs over the last few years, we’ve been encouraging greater electronic working and identifying what the common reasons are for invalidating applications. Read more…
We launched our Smarter Planning initiative a year ago this week so I thought I’d bring you up to speed on the progress in the last 12 months.
Smarter Planning is a partnership between planning agents, local planning authorities and the Portal. It’s a recognition that the industry needs to work together to streamline and improve the planning process.
By pledging a commitment to the Smarter Planning scheme, participants will have access to free training, best practice guidance and advice from the Planning Portal.
In the last 12 months our account management team has been working with professionals and LPAs to help them improve their processes for online application submission.
As soon as they meet the criteria they are designated Smarter Planning Champions.
Planning professionals
Since last October, 212 planning and building professionals have met the criteria of the scheme and have been awarded Smarter Planning Champion status. All have received support and training and are reaping the benefits derived from electronic submission of planning applications.
The 212 breaks down like this:
- 56.7% are sole practitioners
- 32.5% are SMEs (small to medium-sized enterprises)
- 10.8% large corporate users
More information about the professional scheme is available from the Smarter Planning page on the Portal. We also maintain and publish a list of practitioners and companies that have achieved Smarter Planning Champion status.
Local planning authorities
In the same time period we’ve awarded Smarter Planning status to 40 LPAs and are working with a further 62 to help them improve their business processes with electronic applications.
Again, if you want to learn more about becoming a Smarter Planning Champion you can find more information on the Portal and register your interest.
I’m back in the swing of things after a few days r‘n’r in Budapest (what a wonderful city) and I find the team have been as productive as ever. Nothing to do with 1APP this time but with deliveries of a far more personal nature.
In the last few months we’ve had no less than three of the guys in our team becoming dads, two in the last two weeks and both from our tech support team, so please be kind if you have occasion to call our support desk and they’re sounding a little less alert than usual.
We are also continuing to work hard to identify a partner to join us in our employee-led bid to take on the future running of the business following DCLG’s decision to commercialise the Portal.
It’s a very exciting time and we’re deeply gratified to have had so much interest in working with us to develop a bid. There is no guarantee that we’ll win but having a great partner will definitely help.
Finally, the closing date for voting in the Digital Leaders Awards is upon us. I’ve voted for Stephen Hilton at Bristol City Council Futures Group but there are lots of great candidates in central and local government including my good self.
Since the launch of the Smarter Planning (SP) scheme in November last year 205 organisations have achieved SP Champion status by consistently meeting the best practice guidelines of the scheme and submitting all applications online. 116 (56.5%) of these are sole practitioners, 69 (33.6%) SMEs and 20 (9.75%) larger agents.
Our busy Account Management (AM) team have been working closely with a specific group of these larger agents and their work with these organisations continues to have a positive impact. In the last 3-months many of them submitted more online applications in one month than they submitted in any previous month. So far 3 have achieved SP Champion status. The first was Jones Lang LaSalle in January 2013, closely followed by Barton Willmore and Bartlett Tree Experts
Corporate SP Champions are a rare breed because Champion status can only be achieved when their senior executive accepts the principles of the scheme and authorises the training of all appropriate staff in each regional office to ensure they are equipped to fully utilise the Portal. Once trained user applications are monitored to see if they continue to meet the guidelines and adhere to their organisations commitment to submit all possible planning applications online before the status is awarded.
Since becoming the first Corporate SP Champions these organisations have almost doubled (+99.4%) their online submission rates. Based on recent performance and assuming similar levels of business activity, the group is set to submit almost the same number of applications in the remaining 6-months of 2013/14 as they did in the 12-months prior to achieving SP Champions status.
The AMs aim to award Champion status to a further 5 of the targeted accounts by the end of October 2013, one year on from the launch of the scheme. When recruited this group will submit an estimated 1,800 – 2,000 additional online applications/annum. These additional online submissions will help us meet this year’s KPI-1 target – 74% of all applications online by March 2014.
So what’s so smart about being an SP Champion?
I would like to thank all of you who nominated me for this years Digital Leader Awards.
I was astonished to find myself on the shortlist of 10 central Government leaders which includes some very illustrious names indeed.
Now that I’ve made the list I’m keen to represent our industry and would welcome the platform to show how planning has led the way in the transformation of services from paper to digital.
All that’s required is for you to cast your vote if you feel it worthwile.
You may be aware that earlier this month Planning Minister Nick Boles announced a number of Statutory Instruments designed to make planning practice swifter and simpler. These were highlighted in a Portal news article.
New secondary legislation will complete the removal of the requirement for obtaining Conservation Area Consent when demolishing unlisted buildings in conservation areas, and from 1 October 2013 make these proposals subject to planning permission instead.
To facilitate this change on the Planning Portal we have needed to make minor amendments to existing application forms that included conservation area consent to ensure they reflect planning legislation only.
We shall be writing to all applicants with a conservation area consent application in draft advising them to check the certificate details of their application as this will now contain reference to the agricultural land declaration and be subject to planning permission.
The changes apply in England only and full details are provided here.
This is the second part of the round-up of last week’s Really Useful event in Durham. (For those who attended, this isn’t in the strict running order from the day.)
Continuing the theme of the day, Toni Sambridge of Sunderland City Council spoke about the service changes the council had implemented since 2006 to streamline their planning processes and make better use of technology.
A key recommendation was not to try to run parallel paper and online planning systems but to adopt the online system as the single master copy.
Sunderland publishes all representations received on applications electronically. This lets the council maintain an authoritative online copy.
In line with the Planning Portal’s recommendation, the authority also sends all correspondence to customers electronically, reiterating that it is committed to working electronically.
This approach has been well received by agents and planning professionals, most of whom now subscribe to the authority’s planning alerts notifications to keep them informed of progress with their applications.
In the final session, Shah Amin of Newcastle City Council outlined how the authority had made its move to digital-by-default and the ongoing changes being made to the council website. (Note the presentation may take a moment to load on slower networks.)
A key part of the website work is to focus on user journeys so that customers are presented with the right information at the right time and can move to different parts of the website without difficulty.
A key point to building an effective user journey is to identify the critical points where customers fail to complete tasks to make it easier for them to understand information and guidance.
This in turn will reduce avoidable contact by phone in the event of website content being unclear.
Presentations and resources from the event can be accessed below and if you have any questions please get in touch.
The presenters have advised that they are happy to discuss their projects in the interests of sharing best practice to achieve a channel shift of service delivery.
Thanks again to everyone for making it an enjoyable and useful event.
Resources from the day:
- All the presentations combined in one PDF (9MB file size).*
- Resource pack for LPAs including essential links and graphics.
- Part one of the Really Useful day round-up.
Last week we held another Really Useful event, this time in sunny Durham. This follows successful earlier events in Bristol and Huddersfield.
I’d like to thank our hosts and Local DirectGov and, of course, the guest LPA speakers for presenting and sharing the improvements they have made to their planning services and websites.
As always the focus of the Really Useful event was on encouraging a channel shift to new electronic ways of working for LPAs and customers.
Useful insight was again presented by Socitm in support of the event and how to strive for continuous improvement in technology and delivery of information.
Socitm’s Helen Williams outlined how planning services were often one of the poorest performing sections on council websites.
Even though some councils used identical back-end software, some performed much better than others simply by recognising the importance of building clear user journeys for customers.
She underlined the importance of focusing on customer needs when planning web pages.
Helen also gave us a comprehensive overview of Socitm’s annual Better Connected review. She added the provisional task list for ‘Better Connected 2014’ was on their website with a planning task to ‘Find out about a planning decision’. (You have been warned!)
More insight and advice for local authorities is available in the Socitm presentation.
We also received a presentation from our host Durham’s Allan Simpson on the introduction of a single unitary county council following the Local Government Review in 2009.
The project involved the consolidation the eight former districts into a single unitary.
They have recently awarded a contract for a new planning IT back-office system that will bring about further streamlined business procedures and processes across the planning department.
The new system will offer joined up services and use consolidate data from across the new unitary authority. The project identified the best elements from existing systems and build them into one process.
Learn more in Allan’s presentation.
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