Following the launch of our new planning application services, we will be hosting our next webinar to provide you with an update on the latest changes at Planning Portal on Monday 28 February at 12pm.
We appreciate that a small number of users have faced issues over the past few weeks, which our teams are working hard to rectify, but there have also been some great success stories.
Monday’s webinar will provide you with information surrounding the current fixes we have implemented since ‘Go-live’, along with an outline of future updates planned to ensure we provide the highest quality service.
For more information about the webinar, click here.
If you missed the latest episode of our webinar series, you can catch up here or if you need any assistance, please email community@planningportal.co.uk.
This month’s report looks at the fluctuations in application numbers of individual authorities, as well as applications by type and variance in planning application fees.
- 48,625 applications were submitted in England and Wales throughout January 2022.
- This is a 10% reduction in comparison to the figures seen in January 2021.
January 2022 saw a total of 16,522 Householder and related applications submitted.
Also included:
This month’s issue also includes analysis on the regional breakdown of application submissions, a national overview from the last six years and an in-depth dive into applications by type and application fees.
Government to block planning permission if developers don’t protect leaseholders
Communities secretary Michael Gove has set out ‘tough’ measures enabling the government to block planning permission and building control sign-off on developments if professionals in the industry are not doing the right thing.
Laura Edgar, The Planner
WMCA outlines £879m budget for 2022/23
The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) has outlined its budget of £879.2 million for this year, which includes cash for infrastructure, land regeneration and climate change.
Prithvi Pandya, The Planner
£8.1bn green budget backed by Senedd Cymru
Senedd Cymru members this week voted to approve a draft budget that commits it to £8.1 billion of spending on green infrastructure over the next three years.
Roger Milne, The Planner
The Independent Digital Task Force for Planning has published its report, A Digital Future for Planning: Spatial Planning Reimagined. The report provides a blueprint for digitally enabled spatial planning, which in turn presents powerful leverage to deliver zero-carbon, environmental net gain, levelling up, and other ambitious social and economic goals.
Read more…
The Planning Portal is delighted to be hosting their fourth conference virtually on 25 – 28 April 2022. The Spring Conference will cover the pertinent issues affecting planning and building, both now and into the future.
Super Early Bird tickets are available now until the end of February, for just £75.
Read more…Government agency invests in Public Practice
Homes England and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) have announced an investment of more than £200,000 in social enterprise Public Practice.
Laura Edgar, The Planner
‘Little known’ rule should be used to protect local green spaces
Protection designations of local parks and green spaces are an important mechanism to levelling up access to nature for people living in towns and cities, says countryside charity CPRE.
Laura Edgar, The Planner
Student accommodation approved for central London
The City of London Corporation’s planning and transportation committee has granted planning permission for a 644-bed purpose-built student accommodation scheme in the Square Mile.
Laura Edgar, The Planner
Update 3 March 2022 (10:30)
Our phone line is now available and you can contact us again as usual. Thanks for your patience.
Update 3 March 2022 (09:30)
Please be aware that our phone line is currently unavailable due to a technical issue. If you need to contact our support team please email support@planningportal.co.uk. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Update 16 February 2022 (14:20)
The Planning Portal is now available again. This was due to a problem with the technical infrastructure. Thank you for your patience and sorry for the inconvenience.
Update: 16 February 2022 (9am)
The Planning Portal is currently unavailable due to unplanned but essential maintenance. We will have the site back up as soon as possible and will post updates here.
We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.
Update: 10 February 2022 (midday)
As mentioned in Friday’s update, we were continuing to investigate a fix for the issue that had affected payment and submission of a small number of applications created on the old system. A series of fixes have now been successfully applied to the system to prevent the issue affecting any further submissions. Our developers are working as a priority to deal with the small number of applications previously affected. They are testing a fix for this today and we will update as soon as we have further information. Please don’t contact Support if your application remains affected, as they will not be able to provide any further information at this stage.
I can also confirm that all 2 years’ worth of application data is now in the system and we are now focussing on importing supporting documents for those applications.
In parallel, our Support team have been working to respond to as many calls and emails as possible. Obviously call volumes are much higher than usual and even with extra staff, it is taking longer than usual to reply. We were unfortunately hampered yesterday by our phone lines being unavailable for much of the day, but they are back up and running again this morning. Thank you again for your ongoing patience.
4 February 2022
Firstly, let me start by saying a big thank you to our customers this week, for your positive feedback and messages of support. The new Planning Portal system offers a step change in user experience and a platform from which we will add new functionality, forms and continue to enhance.
Our new Planning Portal system went live last weekend and for the vast majority of our customers, it is working well, with +2,000 planning applications a day being successfully created, paid for and submitted to local authorities.
However, some customers and local authorities have been experiencing a small number of issues. We appreciate that issues are not welcomed, but please be rest assured that we and our TerraQuest colleagues have been working tirelessly to fix the issues which have arisen.
The issue affecting payment and submission of some applications created on the old system has been our priority since Monday. Fixes have been applied but for the small number of remaining customers affected, using the copy facility (shown below) to replicate the application and submit, works. One further fix related to this is under investigation, and we are confident that once the fix is put in place, this issue will be resolved.
In parallel, we have now almost completed the input of 2 years’ worth of application forms from the old system. The work to complete the import of all supporting documents is underway.
This is the fourth version of the Planning Portal service and therefore the third time we have rebuilt the system and moved over the user and application data. We geared up operationally for this; at Planning Portal we added resource to our Support Desk and we worked closely with TerraQuest technical support post go live. The teams have been working hard in support and to allow all our customers to take full advantage of this much improved system and the improvements it offers.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. For now, if you are one of the customers experiencing issues, we apologise for any inconvenience and ask for your continued patience as you wait for the final issues to be fixed or for a call back from our Support team. We will continue to post further updates as we have them.
Our planning news is published in association with ThePlanner, the official magazine of the Royal Town Planning Institute.
Read more…*Updated – 3 February, 11:00am
As of 09:30am this morning (3 February) we can confirm that:
All application forms modified since 14 December 2020 have been loaded into the system and we are currently loading the remainder of the two years’ worth of data.
All supporting documents modified since 06 January 2022 have been attached to these applications and we are currently loading the remaining documents.
Will be running another import today.
Further updates to follow.
*Updated – 2 February, 12:00
As of 09:30am this morning (2 February) we can confirm that:
All application forms modified since 28 March 2021 have been loaded into the system and we are currently loading the remainder of the two years’ worth of data.
All supporting documents modified since 06 January 2022 have been attached to these applications and we are currently loading the remaining documents.
Will be running another import today.
Further updates to follow.
*Updated – 1 February, 11:00am
As of 09:00am this morning (1 February) we can confirm that:
All application forms modified since 04 June 2021 have been loaded into the system and we are currently loading the remainder of the two years’ worth of data.
All supporting documents modified since 06 January 2022 have been attached to these applications and we are currently loading the remaining documents.
Will be running another import today.
Further updates to follow.
31 January
You will be aware that Planning Portal has been unavailable over the weekend while we prepared our new service and transferred two years’ worth of application data and registered user accounts. Unfortunately despite months of meticulous planning and preparation, we encountered an issue with the final data load from the old system over the weekend.
Our technical teams worked hard over the weekend to fix the issue and to test it was working and application data was loading correctly. We’re pleased to say that this has been fixed and the data has now begun to load into the new system, but unfortunately it is further behind that we were expecting.
In order to ensure we can complete the loading of supporting documents to all draft applications or applications submitted but not yet downloaded by local authorities, we have reluctantly decided not to make the site available from 9am as planned. We anticipate making the new site available again from 10:00am.
This means that if you log in early this week some applications and supporting documents may not yet be available. We expect all applications and their supporting documents to be available in the coming days and we will update this post regularly with expected time frames.
As of 09:00am this morning (31 January) we can confirm that:
All application forms modified since 02 July 2021 have been loaded into the system and we are currently loading the remainder of the two years’ worth of data.
All supporting documents modified since 06 January 2022 have been attached to these applications and we are currently loading the remaining documents.
If your application is urgent you can manually re-upload supporting documents to your application, but if possible we recommend waiting for them to become available as manually uploading may cause duplicate attachments.
We apologise for any inconvenience this causes and ask for your patience at this time. We will continue to update this message every two hours to give you the latest progress.
Please don’t contact our Support Desk as they will not be able to provide any further updates.
We would like to start by wishing a belated Happy New Year to all Planning Portal customers and partners. 2022 is already shaping up to be an amazing year for us here at Planning Portal: within the next week, we will have launched the new Planning Portal website. This project has been a full team effort in conjunction with our parent company TerraQuest, based in Birmingham, who have built the new service. The new site will put in place the foundations for us to add new features and improved functionality, to continue to improve the service and to help us achieve our vision to cater for the entire planning process – from pre-application to building completion notices – all delivered on a redesigned, spatial platform.
Read more…
Planning Portal Blog 