I am very excited to announce that we are on the cusp of delivering the second part of our long-awaited site upgrade.
This release will allow you to customise the Portal homepage to suit your own needs and better define the content and services you use on a regular basis.
This does mean that the Planning Portal will be unavailable from 8pm, Friday 29th October until a similar time in the evening of Sunday 31st October.
In addition, when you next access the site you will need to reconfirm your registration details, however this process shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes and we hope you’ll agree the improvements will be worth it.
Why are we doing it?
In short, to provide a better service at a cheaper cost. By making the site more relevant we hope to increase take-up and at a time of constrained marketing and communications budgets this redesign makes it easier for us to communicate with our users by sector.
Since going live in May 2002 the Planning Portal has had just one site redesign and remained on the same technical platform, despite significant changes to the content and audience and advances in web technology.
In this time the Planning Portal has seen use of its service grow to help over 330,000 unique users and deliver around 20,000 planning applications every month.
The new technical platform for the Planning Portal significantly cuts the cost of maintaining the site, as well as increasing the opportunities for revenue that the Portal can generate, reducing the burden on the public purse.
Over the coming weeks and months we will be adding new content and services from the private sector via our PortalApps service opening up the site to anyone who has a quality product or service relevant to our industry.
For more information visit the PortalApps area of the website.
Regular readers of this blog will know we have already begun work on the third and final part of our upgrade, which will aim to improve the online application forms (1App) delivering more efficiency benefits to all online applicants.
So as with all significant technical changes it’ll be a nervous weekend – wish us luck and see you on the other side of the weekend.
We have prepared a short video to give you a taste of what your new Portal will look like.
Note: This article was first published in October 2010. I linked to it again in December 2012 following some posts about the 5MB attachment limit. Although many find this limit a pain it clearly wasn’t an issue with this application. Advice on working with the 5MB limit here.
You may have read that the planning application for the Liverpool Waters project, believed to be the UK’s largest-ever individual application, was lodged recently by WYG on behalf of Peel Land & Property.
You may not be aware that it was submitted via the Planning Portal.
There is still a common misconception that the Portal is only suitable for small applications and that there is a 25MB limit on attachments. This is not true. Read more…
LPAs regularly tell us that incorrect plans are a common cause of invalid planning applications.
We are helping address this by asking all Local Authorities who don’t offer plans themselves or don’t have a preferred supplier to direct their customers to the Planning Portal’s ‘Buy a Plan’ service.
The service includes guidance on what plans need to be submitted and offers links to the Portal’s accredited suppliers, each of whose mapping services have been evaluated and approved.
Using these suppliers will ensure applications are not invalidated because of incorrect plans.
LPAs
Linking to the service couldn’t be easier! There’s a button (just click it and copy)
together with a link www.planningportal.gov.uk/buyamap that can simply be added to your planning homepage along with the example explanatory text (in italics below).
Every planning application needs a site location plan and block plan showing the location and boundaries of the site you are planning to work on. You can use the Planning Portal’s ‘Buy a Plan’ service to ensure that you meet our requirements, whether you are a planning professional or first-time applicant.
Click here to “Buy a Plan”
Please contact Beccy Greenfield for any assistance.
Agents and Citizens
To ensure your site plans meet the requirements simply visit the Portal mapping page.
I have written today to our partners in the e-Consultation Hub project to inform them that the project will close at the end of December 2010.
Like everyone else we are making choices about what we can and should be doing with our resources. We’ve decided that we must focus on supporting and improving the online planning application service (1App) and we simply can’t afford to do both.
I am certain that you will understand the rationale for this decision.
We will be working with our LPA and Consultee partners to minimise disruption and ensure no consultations go astray during the close-down.
I would like to publicly thank each of our partners for their commitment and contribution.
The Portal’s interactive house is one of the most recognisable parts of the site. It was originally designed for use by members of the public who wanted to understand how planning rules work and it has been extremely succesful. Later in the post I recount the history of the house but before doing so I’d like to make you aware of it’s latest exciting incarnation.
House for Sale – no mortgage required
We’ve now moved the house on by stripping it of all content and adding a very simple content management system that will enable anyone (really anyone!) to add whatever content they like, not necessarily planning but anything house or home related.
We’ve already built a Crime Prevention version to demonstrate its potential for non-planning content but the permutations are endless, from providing info to tenants on various scenarios around the home to a sales tool for doors and windows – you decide.
We’ve made it incredibly easy to customise, add new features and content and publish it to the web.
If you’d like to get your foot on the cyber ladder please contact our commercial team
to talk about the costs or access to our demonstrator.
The History of the House Read more…
As previously discussed in my post dated August 25th, we’ve been looking at ways to help you report on the green benefits of online submission.
Well our Carbon Calculator is now live, looking good and ready for you to use.
This is a really useful tool designed specifically for planning to help you measure the benefits of electronic submission and to communicate your environmental commitment to your prospective clients and other stakeholders.
Alongside this we have now launched our Green pledge and Green logo. Lots of companies have already been in touch to tell us they already submit all their planning applications online and we are sending them out pledges to sign and display to let everyone know their commitment to greener working. As part of this process we send them a Green logo to display on their website and marketing material and we’re promoting these enlightened companies on the Portal too.
We have also spoken to companies who want to submit more applications online but need support from us to do so, something we are more than happy to provide in any way we are able to.
If you are currently submitting all your applications online or would like to learn what training and support we have to help you do so please contact our own green goddess Christabel. Read more…
The primary objective of our Corporate Account Managers (CAM’s) is to help business users overcome any issues that are preventing them from using our online application service to its full extent.
Our CAM team provide the training and support needed to help business users quickly benefit from the operational cost savings other users confirm they achieve i.e through streamlining office procedures, improving their competitive edge and helping obtain more timely planning decisions for their clients.
We have found that even regular users of the online application service are not always aware of all the existing Portal functionality. Therefore the CAM team regularly arrange User Surgeries to train new and update long-term users who have embraced online submission.
These live online sessions can be customised to meet the particular requirements of any organisation, including those with multi-disciplinary teams or dispersed teams.
The CAM’s are strategically located around the country and work in partnership with our LPA team to help facilitate improved working between business and LPAs.
If you think your business would benefit from talking to a CAM please get in touch with Christabel christabel.pattison@planningportal.gsi.gov.uk and we’ll introduce you.
Chris
Having run the poll on 1App changes for 4 weeks now, we have found that the following five proposals received 76% of the votes between them.
Reduce the length of the forms 19%
Reduce the need to re-enter data on forms 17%
Create distinction between residential and commercial on full application 16%
Upload multiple attachments 13%
Simplify the supporting documents section 11%
We are now evaluating the cost and technical implications of these improvements and expect to bid for the funds in the very near future. If possible we hope to deliver these improvements within the current financial year however this will be subject to funding being made available.
At the same time and in parallel, we are taking a longer-term view of the 1App service to see whether root and branch improvements can and should be made and importantly how they might be funded. As I’m sure you will appreciate this is a key consideration in the current climate.
Take a look at East Devons innovative approach to engaging people in local planning.
Full marks for trying – who knew planners had a sense of humour!
Chris
Green is good, as Gordon Gecko almost said.
We are aware that a many of our clients have now converted to e-working, we’re just not sure how many.
We are about to offer those enlightened businesses that have fully switched a nice green Planning Portal logo to use as they feel appropriate on their corporate materials.
We hope it will help identify your business as forward thinking and responsible and that in these times that will convert into customers.
We’re also launching a Carbon Calculator specifically designed to enable business or LPA users to calculate exactly how much CO2 e-planning is saving.
By our calculations the Portal will facilitate 25,706 tonnes of CO2 savings over the next four years. If like me you have difficulty visualising what a tonne of CO2 looks like then take a look at the work of Dave Ames, a science teacher at Cohasset High School in Cohasset, Massachusetts.
If you or your company is already submitting all of your planning applications online then please add your company name as a comment below and we’ll be in touch about the logo.
Planning Portal Blog 