Eastbourne Borough Council has made radical changes to the way it works. The result is the implementation of a paperless, multi-channel, customer contact case management system for use across council departments – including development control and planning policy functions.
In the first blog post we looked at the background to the changes. Here we look at the practicalities of paperless working.
Key elements of the move were the development of the remote server access and the ‘locked-down’ post room, where the rule that no paper leaves is strictly enforced.
All incoming post, including planning applications submitted on paper, are scanned and placed into ‘work trays’ alongside electronically submitted applications, ready to be dealt with on-screen. Read more…
This week we introduced a new form to our ever-expanding suite.
The Government has been consulting on making improvements to the process for planning applications for handling the extraction of onshore oil and gas (including shale gas) developments.
On the 20 December 2013, secondary legislation was laid in relation to application requirements. Unlike other forms of development, applications for planning permission for minerals were made on an application form provided by the individual mineral planning authority. Read more…
Eastbourne Borough Council has made radical changes to the way it works. The result is the implementation of a paperless, multi-channel, customer contact case management system for use across council departments – including development control and planning policy functions.
In this first blog post we look at the background to the changes. A second part will look at the practicalities of paperless working.
In 2008 Eastbourne Borough Council’s received a poor comprehensive area assessment (CAA) report. The council’s response was to begin planning what it called the DRIVE programme – Delivering Real Innovation and Value for Eastbourne. Read more…
Headline Statistics
Between July and September 2013 district level planning authorities in England:
- decided 114,000 planning applications, 3 per cent higher than in the same quarter in the previous year
- granted 93,500 permissions, 4 per cent higher than in the same quarter in 2012
- granted 88 per cent of applications, compared with 87 per cent in the same quarter in 2012
- 69 per cent of major applications were processed within 13 weeks, compared with 57 per cent in the same quarter in 2012
- LPAs decided 10 per cent more residential decisions compared to the September quarter 2012, with numbers of major decisions (10 or more dwellings) up by 42 per cent
- the number of applications received increased by 5 per cent compared to the June 2013 quarter, while the number of applications decided and granted in the September 2013 quarter both increased by 4 per cent and 4 per cent respectively from the corresponding numbers in the June 2013 quarter
More information is available from the statistical release and accompanying live table.
Planning Portal Statistics
In this period you submitted 91,970 online applications – an increase of 18% on the same period last year, making the percentage of applications for Q2 2013/14 a fantastic 73.7%
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.
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