Now that I have your attention, I’d like to pose the question: “What would need to change to make this happen?”
Let’s assume that we are on our way to bridging the digital divide and everybody has broadband. Let’s also assume legislation has been passed that mandates the paperless process.
What next? For example, what IT would LPAs need to enable visitors to view plans successfully in planning offices?
How might developers submit applications for large scale schemes and how might public consultation work?
Could this be achieved in three years? And what would it all cost?
Over to you.
Chris
Just a quick note to report that December broke the record for the highest ever percentage of planning applications submitted online.
We calculate that 38.2% of planning applications were submitted online compared with a previous high of 36.6%.
The North East stands out as the leading region with more than 47% of applications submitted online whilst more than 20% of authorities across the country received more than half their applications online.
All this set against a background of fairly slow progress in 2009 reflecting the overall downturn in the number of applications submitted.
Our latest round of Planning Professional workshops started yesterday morning at Sevenoaks, the first of 17 venues. Around 30 non-users learnt how to apply and online, saving themselves time and money in the process.
So far around 600 individuals have booked themselves to attend the remaining workshops, but there are still some spaces available.
If you know someone who still submits on paper, make sure you tell them about our free workshops.
To book a place please click here
Various times are available at the following venues Read more…
As I’ve mentioned previously, Government is fully behind the Planning Portal and is not intending to privatise us at any point in the near future, however, we will need to contribute more significantly to our own costs in the coming year and beyond.
We have a number of cunning plans which we’ll bring to your attention as they pan out; but we’d be remiss not to consider the elephant in the room, namely adverts on the website.
In considering this, we have choices. For example, do we go for a low-volume, high-cost model and risk upsetting all the SMEs out there or do we go the other way and offer high-volume, low-cost and generate lots of work for ourselves that eats into the revenue.
I’d be interested to hear your views on the general subject or the specific approaches.
One thing I should say, whichever way we go, we will only carry advertising relevant to our industry.
UPDATE: Met Office web site now carrying advertising including from RAC and British Gas
I’m sure we can all agree that it’s been a tough year, with the planning sector being hit as hard – if not harder – than most others.
Despite that background, the shift of services to online channels continues apace, as the following table indicates.
I will follow up this post shortly with a full review of the Portal’s activities in 2009 together with our plans for 2010 and beyond.
However, for the time being, here are the headline stats in a nutshell.
| 2008 | 2009 | Growth | |||
| Total number of planning applications submitted via the Portal | 144,979 | 166,965 | 15.2% | ||
| % of planning applications submitted online via the Portal | 24.5% | 33.4% | 36.3% | ||
| Total number of visits to the Portal | 5,852,234 | 6,616,469 | 13.1% | ||
| Average number of monthly visitors to the Portal | 250,198 | 299,040 | 19.5% | ||
| Average number of monthly visits to the Portal | 487,686 | 551,372 | 13.1% | ||
As part of our Killian Pretty work on improving the quality of online planning information we were tasked with talking to LPAs and their customers about what makes a good local planning website.
We received almost 400 responses to our survey, spoke to dozens of LPA staff and their customers and the results of the combined insight have been compiled in a report entitled “The Building Blocks of a Good Local Planning Authority Website”.
The report is aimed at LPAs and in recognition of the financial and technical limitations many LPAs face in the current climate, we’ve arranged these recommendations in tiers, ranging from quick wins to more involved changes.
The report contains a wide range of suggestions for improving planning pages – as recommended by LPAs and their customers – including recommendations for making improvements to policy pages, mapping services, application forms, contact information, local application registers and links to the authority’s building control service.
Finally, we’re still collecting feedback on our idea to deliver LPA-branded Portal pages on LPAs’ behalf. Find out more about this in one of my earlier posts. There’s been a lot of excitement about the idea so far from LPA regional workshops and there’ll be a great deal more information to come in 2010.
Let us know what you think by adding a comment.
Hello all,
Just before Christmas, release 4.02 went live with the following fixes.
| Change Reference | Affected Areas | Description |
| Defect 414 & 442 | 1APP Attachments | Change to prevent ‘Reserved Characters’, e.g. ‘:’, from being included in filenames uploaded to an application |
| Defect 424 | Online App’s and web service downloads | Fix to ensure site plans attached to an application with the same filename are time stamped to ensure the filename is unique |
| Defect 428 | Local Information/Dev Plans | Fix to ensure that you can view all development plans for LPAs who have multiple plans on the Portal |
| Defect 429 | Local Information | Fix to ensure contact details and relevant links are available when you select a county council via the ‘Local Information’ section |
| Defect 430 | Online App’s | Fix to ensure that the LPA contact information is present on the Form Chooser screen within the application section |
| Defect 431 | Online App’s | Fix to ensure that applications which have been archived and then opened for document amendments appear in the ‘My Application’ list |
| Defect 439 | Online App’s (Professional users only) | Fix to remove unwanted code from displaying at the top of the Professional Users Forms and Fees tab pages |
Just a quick note to share with you yet another Portal milestone – individual subscriptions to the e-Newsletter have now reached 60,000.
Yesterday’s newsletter was sent to 60,007 subscribers – only seven months after surpassing the big 50,000 target.
Some of the top stories you’ve viewed this year have included February’s High Court judgment that gave a new slant on the tree definition! You were also keen to view the Government’s response to the Killian Pretty Review – which the Portal has been heavily involved in implementing.
Not keen to rest on our laurels, we’re still assessing your responses to the survey we sent out in July and will, through further research, be exploring how we can improve the overall news package in the New Year.
In the meantime, don’t be afraid to let us know what you think about the content and what you’d like to see in the future. Due to the Christmas break, the newsletter will resume service on the 7 January 2010.
If you don’t already subscribe to the newsletter register now. It’ll will only take a moment and will make you the most informed person in your office.
Chris
Following our recent Infrastructure changes and as part of continual improvement of the website, we aim to ensure that the software tools we use are the latest supported versions.
Consequently we recently upgraded our Adobe software and are now using version 8.
As this software is used for the standard planning application form and application service, some Local Planning Authorities who are using older version of Adobe Acrobat Reader may now get an Adobe warning message when opening the application forms.
The upgrade to version 8 is free; however, you will need to discuss this with your IT department to install the software on your network.
If you are not in a position to upgrade to version 8 or later, please accept the warning message that is displayed and you will be able to proceed using your current version. Upgrading your network to version 8 will prevent the warning message being displayed.
If you have any queries regarding this message, please do not hesitate to contact Portal Support on e: support@planningportal.gsi.gov.uk or 0117 372 8200.
Between the 25th of Jan and 18th of Feb there will be more than 20 events aimed at getting paper planners online. Submitting applications online saves agents a stack of money and time and it’s kind to the environment too.
I know most of you are already bought in, however if you know someone who is still submitting on paper please pull their head out of the snow and point them in the direction of one of our events. Think of yourself as a missionary for the digital age and consider it your first good deed for the new year.
We are also pulling together our testimonials for our business planning for next year, so if you have any feedback that might help I’d be especially grateful. I’m particularly interested in quantifiable savings in time or money.
Planning Portal Blog 