This week we are launching an initiative to encourage and support best practice in the electronic submission of planning applications – something close to my heart.
The initiative, called 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 – now more than ever. Read more…
A round up of our stats for your delectation!
| 100% | Local authorities using the Portal |
| 300,000+ | Registered users |
| 278,000 | Planning applications in 2011/12 |
| 75% | Householder planning appeal submissions |
| 2m | Annual Building Regulations, Approved Document downloads |
| 80,000+ | E-news subscribers |
| 300,000+ | Monthly visitors |
| 1m | Monthly visits |
| 10m | Monthly page views |
| 2,500+ | Tonnes CO2 saved annually |
| £120m+ | Annual benefits to UK Plc |
Back in April I told you about Bristol City council and its newly launched Agent Accreditation Scheme.
Six months on and the scheme is going from strength to strength. Our head of LPA engagement Scott Alford recently attended their first meeting between the agents and the local authority.
As part of the scheme, participating agents have to attend one of two annual meetings with the council’s planning team to let them know how the scheme is working. Read more…
A big hello from all the folks at the Planning Portal to the new face of Government content.
From today GOV.Uk replaces Direct.Gov as the go to source for all your questions about Government business.
Of course we’ve provided most of the planning content, which links back to us for the detail and the transactions and we’ll be work with the Government Digital team to keep it up to date and useful.
Everybody is doing it, from Facebook to Pinterest, Linkedin to Twitter, it’s a social and business revolution.
Even Local Authorities are using Twitter in innovative ways to inform local folk of neighbourhood issues.
But what I wonder is the potential to improve the planning process?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and while you’re at it join me over on LinkedIn.
Amidst all the doom and gloom, a ray of sunshine.
As this graph clearly shows the number of online submissions continues to grow year on year.
We recently set-up a new local planning authority account on the Portal – the London Legacy Development Corporation
The LLDC is responsible for the regeneration legacy from the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The new LPA gained the full range of planning functions that would normally be available to a local planning authority, including plan making powers, on 1 October 2012.
The Portal has been updated so that applications can now be made to the LLDC and also displays correct content when carrying out searches.
Over the weekend we made a small but important update to one of the Portal’s PDF forms.
The update was to the Extant Permissions form to cater for the one-year extension to the policy that was mentioned in the Secretary of State’s Written Ministerial Statement (no longer available online) announced on 6 September. Read more…
I’m off for a couple of days r’n’r on a golf course in Spain.
Fortunately for you folks the team will step in and fill my shoes until I return.
Be ready for vastly improved grammar and well written content.
Don’t worry normal service will resume when I get back on Monday.
Hasta la vista.
I’m happy to report that the new pay and submit process went live last night.
A quick reminder about this change: previously payment happened as a separate step to submission. By asking users to ‘pay’ and ‘submit’ at the same time it brings our system into line with industry best practice and makes submitting applications faster and more straightforward.
Just to be clear: we have not removed any payment options. We’ve just made the steps to submitting an application easier.
Everything appears to be in order with the change but do let me know if you see anything amiss.
Here’s a short video highlighting the new change.
Planning Portal Blog 