Today the Portal is pleased to announce the launch of the visual guide to loft conversions. It has nine slides to reflect the increased number of limits and conditions compared to porches. You can see the final version of the new product here.
Key Features
- Graphical representation of common projects affected by new PD rules
- Text and visuals showing limits and proximities
- Clear summary checklist at the end
- Printable PDF summary documents for users and LPAs
Watch this space for further new visual guides from the Planning Portal content team.
MasterMap Update
At the start of October, we updated the 1:1250 map data, which contains buildings, roads, water, etc, to the current version.
PDF Fees Summary
Responding to LPA requests we have also recently delivered the PDF fees summary – a document that sets out how applicants calculated their application fee.
And finally, If you’d like to keep an eye on our performance, you’ll need to read our Service Report (below).
Service Report
The Service Report, which is published on the Planning Portal, contains monthly, quarterly and annual statistics and information on performance and customer satisfaction. Read more…
I’ve added a feed to the left hand column that will aggregate content updates from the CLG site.
The feed includes articles from the “consultation”, “articles” and “what’s new” feeds.
Let me know if it’s useful.
Chris
On Thursday 1st October, CLG introduced two new application forms:
- Application for a new planning permission to replace an extant planning permission, in order to extend the time limit for implementation. Application for replacement of associated listed building and/or conservation area consents in order to extend the time limit for implementation. Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990.
- Application for a non-material amendment following a grant of planning permission. Town and Country Planning Act 1990
Steve Quartermain, CLG’s Chief Planner has issued a letter which contains information and and answers to FAQs. Read more…
We have recently published the first in a series of guides to planning for the most popular householder building projects.
The guides provide easy to understand, visual walk-throughs of the permitted development limits and conditions for common projects such as porches, extensions and loft conversions.
The guides support Killian Pretty Review recommendations and aim to help citizens understand the regent changes to the permitted development regime.
You can access the guidance on porches, a guide to extensions will follow soon.
Hurrah we’re live, if everything looks and works the same as it did on Friday we’ve been successful.
The idea of this stage of our biggest I.T change since we launched in 2002 was not to rock your world but to stabilise ours.
Many months of work between the Portal team and our technical partners IBM, Adobe and others has delivered a new technical infrastructure (Hardware and Software platform) and hosting environment for the Portal.
The service embraces newer, greener, technologies to deliver scalable and resilient services that will provide greater flexibility to meet future opportunities in support of the e-Planning agenda and futures changes and upgrades to Portal services. We anticipate saving more than 30% on power consumption alone.
The new service also paves the way for application software upgrades and enhanced content management tools to improve the presentation of information to Portal users.
The countdown to Portal 2.0 begins now….
Thanks to everybody involved.
Chris
If you want to know all the techie stuff Read more…
The e-Consultation Hub, recommended for national adoption by the Killian Pretty Review, was formally launched in autumn 2008 by the Planning Portal on behalf of CLG. Expected to help drive and enhance the Government’s modernisation agenda, the Hub has been introduced to provide all of the national stakeholders in the planning process with the capability to complete both their internal and external consultation online. Read more…
The Killian Pretty Review made a number of recommendations aimed at improving the planning process.
The Killian Pretty Review Final Report and the Government’s response can be found on the Planning Portal on this page.
The Portal, on behalf of CLG, has been asked to lead on a number of the recommendations under separate work streams. Read more…
IRP has provided the Portal with an opportunity to improve the way its products and communications are delivered. The changes will improve our customer experience and allow users to customise their experience depending on what areas of the Portal they use the most. These improvements are being delivered under the Portal 2.0 project.
The new site will feature a new, refreshed design and will offer much better levels of accessibility. It is being tested at five different stages to ensure compliance and ease of use.
Phase 1, the User Experience and Information Architecture for the new site was completed in June 09. The Portal is now working on phase 2, the development, testing and implementation of the website which is due to go live in the first quarter of 2010.
We will keep you updated as we move forward.
The Planning Portal is completely restructuring its technical bits that deliver the website services. We have called this the Infrastructure Refreshment Project (or IRP for short).The IRP will enable the Portal to exploit the capabilities of Web 2.0, providing enhancements to the full range of Portal services, stabilising the existing service and enabling a move towards a customisable service.
The new service is set to go live this weekend and the System and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is complete.
The delivery of this project has been carefully planned to ensure that the effect on Portal customers is minimal. The planning application service will not be available this weekend but access to the Reference Information will be available for most of the time.
This outage while data is moved to the new environment will be the only impact that most existing users will experience (fingers crossed!).
Planning Portal Blog 