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!).
Now that the blog is well established our communications team have decided to jump on the bandwagon and use this channel to provide regular updates on all things Portal.
The aim of these updates are to let you know what the team is currently working on and to give you the opportunity to make your views heard.
The updates will provide up to the minute progress reports from teams and groups working within the portal on different projects and include information on events, technical enhancements and fixes.
We are working on a new theme for the blog to seperate the “news” from the “views” but until then you’ll need to read it all or risk missing the golden nuggests.
If you have any questions please post your comments under an update and the relevant team will receive your feedback
Thanks Chris and the Planning Portal team
Just a short post to clarify the position on e-Consultation connectors.
As Ocella have now proven the e-Consultation connector schema provided by the Portal to LPA ICT providers is perfectly workable, disproving any statements currently being made to the contrary.
I urge any LPAs who are considering connecting to the hub to contact me or your Portal account manager for assistance.
We at the Portal are doing our utmost to work with everyone involved in the planning system to support improvements for all. We know how tough it is at the moment both for LPAs working with limited and decreasing resources and for businesses seeking the most efficient ways of working.
I am always happy to engage in discussion and I’m happy to be told I’m wrong, but too much hard work has gone into this project for it to be mis-represented.
Chris
South Oxfordshire District Council has become the first LPA to go live with an integrated implementation of the e-Consultation Hub.
The integration was facilitated by Ocella, the first LPA IT provider to get a connector to market.
I’ll report back on progress but expect to see great news on efficiencies.
Chris
Planning Portal Blog 