Overnight this blog passed the milestone of 300,000 views.
I’d like to take a moment to thank readers, contributors and critics alike for continuing to use this channel to help us build a better service.
All my very best regards
Chris
And a bountiful harvest it was, with more than 33,000 planning applications processed.
This beats our previous record month by more than 1,400 applications!
Not bad for a month with two bank holidays.
We’ve just published the Notification of a Proposed Larger Home Extension as promised last week.
You will find it here. We’ve also created a guidance note.
It contains only those elements required by the Statutory Instrument and therefore should be acceptable to every local authority in England.
We are now working on the other notification types beginning with ‘change of use’ and we’ll be releasing them as we complete them over the next few weeks.
My thanks to all you who supplied forms for us to plagiarise including colleagues at East Devon and Hart DCs, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and to all those LPAs who have helped QA so far.
Update 4th June: We have hopefully resolved the issues some people were having viewing the notification PDF. This was to do with the way certain browsers preview PDFs. The PDF displays fine if you open it in a dedicated PDF viewer such as Adobe’s own Acrobat Reader.
If you want to complete the PDF you will need to download it to your computer, this can’t be done in the browser. You can download the PDF by right-clicking the link and choosing ‘download linked file’ (or similar wording based on your operating system). Alternatively there might be an option to download the file in the browser – again, depending on which one you use.
Last year the Government decided to go ahead with a proposal to merge the application form requirements for agricultural land declarations and ownership certificates. The new combined certificates will simplify the application form and reduce the number of invalid applications submitted on paper (by post) on the basis of a technicality.
We will be introducing the changes on the evening of Thursday 6 June (18:00 – 20:00).
Please read on as there are implications for anyone with applications in draft at that time. Read more…
UPDATE: Notification due for release Monday 3rd June.
We are now in the process of creating a ‘Notification of a proposed larger home extension’ to support the new permitted development regime.
The notification will be available for download from the Portal.
In order to get this up quickly we will be developing a simple downloadable PDF that captures the information set out in the statutory instrument.
Within the PDF we will provide links to
- our LPA finder to help find the correct contact details
- our Buy A Map service to make sure appropriate plans are provided
We intend to make this live as soon as possible.
This quick and simple solution will be followed by something more sophisticated as soon as we are able.
Over the next few weeks we have a couple of planned outages to deploy changes to 1APP and increase the capacity of the site.
We’ve picked the least busy times but I would still like to apologise for any inconvenience.
The imminent dates for site downtime are
- Saturday, 25th May 08:00 – 10:00 – to increase our database capacity to cope with the significant increase in traffic, applications submitted and general usage.
- Thursday, 6th June 18:00 – 20:00 – to deploy the changes to the 1App certificates. If you currently have an application in draft you’ll want to read that linked post in detail.
We’re also introducing some further improvements to 1APP in the coming months. I’m just waiting for a little more confidence on release dates before sharing details.
Watch this space…
The second in our series of alphabetically themed discussion topics is ‘B’ for BIM.
I could have chosen bats, builders or Building Regulations – all worthy topics that I’m sure we’ll return to – but for now I’d welcome your views on the subject of BIM (Building Information Modeling).
I am particularly interested in your thoughts on the implications of BIM for the Planning Portal and the services we provide, but I’m happy to share any relevant comments.
For starters here are a few prompts:
- Is BIM relevant to you at all?
- Is just for larger schemes?
- Is it the future of all efficient building?
Or none of the above?
Your comments on the posts on this blog are a gold mine of information on how our customers are submitting applications electronically – or indeed not.
Over the coming weeks I will use some of these nuggets to form the a basis of a series of short articles around sector-specific topics, starting with:
‘A’ and architects.
I’ve heard it reported that on occasion original drawings and plans can be misappropriated by other applicants for use in their own submissions.
We’ve heard a couple of instances of this over the years but a comment from architectural designer Bob Ridgway raised this on a recent post about supporting documents.
He found that some applications had been made using ‘pirated drawings’.
Bob explains:
“These drawings have simply been obtained from a neighbour or downloaded from the LPA website, the title box was crudely altered with a felt tipped marker pen and the drawings then used free of charge for a different address.
“As this can be classed as a commercial use, then it is a criminal offence. “
“The last thing that an LPA needs is being caught up in a legal case. We have had this happen to our practice but thankfully we were alerted by a planning officer who was good enough to tell me ‘off the record’ after a planning meeting…”
I would love to hear what the experience of other architects and professionals has been of ‘pirated drawings’?
Is it something the LPA needs to keep an eye on or perhaps something the Portal might be able to help with?
Please share your thoughts, experiences and suggestions.
On a related note, one of our account management team recently heard from a paper submitter that the main barrier to electronic submission for him was the hassle of going back and forth to the local bureau and the perceived cost of A3 scanners.
We know that many applicants put tremendous pride in the quality of their hand-drawn plans and rightly so.
However you may not be aware that the tools to transfer your high-quality drawings into a high-quality PDF may be more affordable than you think. The architect in question thought that scanners would be well over the £1,000 mark where in fact you can now get a decent-quality A3 scanner for around £150.
It would only take a couple of applications to absorb the cost of a scanner (and return trips to the bureau) and it would also let you process amendments quicker, too.
Today’s blog post was in no way sponsored by Epson, HP or any other manufacturer of flat-bed A3 scanners…
Just in case you missed it, the Government yesterday unveiled the details of the new regime for larger house extensions.
The new regulations granting new permitted development rights in England – including those for rear-of-house extensions – will come into force on 30 May.
The measures include increasing the size of single-storey rear extensions which can be built under permitted development for a period of three years between 30 May 2013 and 30 May 2016.
These larger extensions will be subject to a neighbour consultation scheme.
You can find out more about the permitted development rights for house extensions and access details of the neighbour consultation scheme on the Planning Portal.
Here’s a link to our news story about the regime.
April was a stunning month with 543,887 visitors making 1.2M visits to the site, averaging more than 40,000 visits a day.
This is the first time we’ve passed the half million mark.
This good news continues the growth trend across all key metrics which included more than 10M page views in the month.
There were also more than 30,000 planning applications submitted for the second month in a row.
Planning Portal Blog 