We’re pleased to be a partner at the first Better Connected Live event on 24 and 25 May in Birmingham.
Bringing together top level management in local public services with customer and service delivery management, web, digital and communications specialists and those supporting widening digital participation, the event will examine an integrated approach to digital delivery across local authorities.
We’re working with the organisers to deliver the ‘planning’ session on the afternoon of 25 May. During the session we will explore ways of better promoting planning services online – drawing on our own experiences, the insights from the long-running Better Connected research and most importantly from LPAs themselves. You’ll hear two local planning authorities explain the steps they took to improve their customers’ website experience and the benefits derived.
The event will be of particular interest to local authority planners and colleagues in the web and IT teams.
Please join us in May. More information and bookings available on the website.
We have updated five forms that are being affected by new legislation which came into effect on 6 April.
- Change of Use of a Building from Shops (Class A1), Financial and Professional Services (Class A2), a Betting Office, Pay Day Loan Shop or a Mixed Use Combining Use as a Dwellinghouse with a Betting Office, Pay Day Loan Shop, Shops (Class A1) or Financial and Professional Services (Class A2) to a use falling within Class C3 (Dwellinghouses), and for Associated Operational Development: Schedule 2, Part 3, Class M.
- Change of Use of a building from Office Use (Class B1 (a)) to a Dwellinghouse (Class C3): Schedule 2, Part 3, Class O.
- Change of Use of Agricultural Building to a Dwellinghouse (Class C3), and for Associated Operational Development: Schedule 2, Part 3, Class Q.
- Change Of Use from Storage or Distribution Buildings (Class B8) and any land within its curtilage to Dwellinghouses (Class C3): Schedule 2, Part 3, Class P.
- Change of Use from Amusement Arcades/Centres and Casinos, (Sui Generis Uses) and any land within its curtilage to Dwellinghouses (Class C3): Schedule 2, Part 3, Class N.
We are also updating site guidance in line with new regulations.
So firstly, an update on the email issue from last week which was stopping users from resetting their accounts.
Our supplier delivered us a workaround which was tested and delivered over the weekend. This means that we can now reset passwords over the phone for any customers still affected.
Our support and account management teams are phoning back those users who have logged this problem with us as quickly as possible. I appreciate that it is frustrating, but please don’t call/email again if you already have an incident number as this will just slow the process down. Thanks for your continuing patience with this.
I can assure you that every customer problem is dealt with as quickly as possible, but I’m aware that wait times on the phone and responses by email are still far longer than anyone would want (including us). In order to resolve problems asap and bring down the backlog, the team have been working evenings and over the weekend.
It is also worth mentioning some key stats for last week. By 17:00 last Friday:
- more than 10,000 users had successfully reset their accounts
- more than 14,500 applications had been created
- more than 100,000 supporting documents had been uploaded
- around 7,500 applications had been successfully submitted
In my last post, I highlighted an issue which was affecting some users as emails were being sent from our system, but weren’t being received. This was stopping some users from re-setting their accounts. Our supplier has been investigating and discovered a problem with one of the (apologies, tech speak alert) IP addresses on the email server – basically the problem meant that some email systems were blocking the emails as they viewed the source as suspicious. The supplier has put in a fix and it now seems to be working for BT Connect customers.
If you are a BT Connect customer, you should now be able to go through the activation process again and get into your account. Don’t forget you start this by trying to login (on the top blue bar) and then you will be prompted to set-up your account.
Unfortunately, there still appears to be an issue for other BT customers and some other email providers. We are still working on an urgent fix and/or workaround and I’ll keep you posted.
Firstly some apologies…yesterday was not as smooth as anyone here wanted, despite a huge amount of effort over a number of months and meticulous planning. Many thousands of users are up and running on the system, but an unacceptable number are still not. We’re working through your calls and emails as quickly as we can and the whole team (not just our Support Desk) are helping and resolving problems where we can. We’ve also updated our FAQs which you may want to look at first.
Secondly, here is where we are with the recurring issues:
(1) Redirects from our gov.uk to our co.uk site weren’t correctly applied by the supplier who manages the old domain name. This was fixed yesterday and the redirects are now working across the whole site, including PDFs which seemed to still be an issue this morning.
(2) Re-setting accounts has been a problem for some. This had to be done because we were unable to securely migrate encrypted passwords to the new site and needed to protect your data. There appear to be 2 separate issues here:
- The first was a problem with some email settings which wouldn’t allow a link to be clicked. Yesterday we added text to the emails as well as the link, so that you can cut and paste the text as an alternative.
- The second issue is that emails are being sent from our system but don’t seem to be arriving with some users. We’re putting in a secure workaround to get affected users back up and running asap, whilst we do some further investigation into this.
If you are still experiencing problems, we really do appreciate your continued patience. I’ll continue to provide updates here.
*Update at 14:10
There have been some issues affecting access this morning:
- Our third party supplier did not correctly apply the redirects from the gov.uk to the co.uk site which means that some people have been having trouble finding us. They advise that this has now been done but it does take up to 4 hours to appear across the internet. This has meant that links from search engines and LPA sites have been broken, but they will be restored as soon as the redirects are up and running. LPAs were notified of the move to co.uk and many were involved in the testing, however no-one foresaw the problems with the redirects.
- Some users are still reporting problems with access, mostly on IE 11 or Safari. Chrome appears to be fine. If you are experiencing this, please try clearing your cache/temporary internet files.
- Some users are unable to click on the account set up link in the automated email. This is due to email security settings. Please speak to your IT team (if you have one). If you have a second email address associated with the account, then our Support team can help you while we put an alternate authentication method in place. The account set-up had to be put in place as we weren’t able to migrate passwords for security reasons.*
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The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted that the new site is now live at www.planningportal.co.uk .
A huge thanks to the Portal team and our suppliers old and new who spent their Easter weekend working hard to make it happen.
More than 1,000 of you have already set up your accounts on the new system. If you haven’t, you can do it at any time by following the instructions in my last post.
We really hope you like it and would welcome your feedback on future improvements. Already on the priority list:
- An increase to the 5MB attachment limit where it is feasible for LPAs to receive and process the files
- A building control application service
- A secure method for applicants to pay directly for applications submitted by their agents
- Further improvements to the new workspace function and other improvements just for professional/corporate users
- A redesigned interactive house
Hopefully, you will know by now that we are launching the new Planning Portal website over the Easter weekend (24-27 March 2016).
Just a reminder that the existing site will be taken offline tonight (Thursday 24 March) at 17:00 and the new site will be available from 09:00 on Tuesday 29 March at www.planningportal.co.uk. Don’t forget to update your bookmarks!
If you are a registered user, your account details and any draft/submitted application data which has been modified since 1 July 2015 will be transferred to the new site. However, you will need to perform a quick set-up before you access the new application service for the first time:
- When you first sign in to the new Planning Portal you will be asked to ‘Set-up your account’.
- Your user name and registered email address will then be displayed. If these are correct and you still have access to the email address please click on the ‘Confirm account and send activation email’ button.
- The system will then send you an email. You will need to follow the instructions in the email to complete the process.
- Once activated, you will be sent a new temporary password that will need to be changed the first time you sign in.
And that’s it! Once you’re in, you will have access to all the functions and facilities you are familiar with but will quickly notice some significant improvements and a new look and feel.
We have published a series of short videos highlighting the new features on the blog if you want to take a look while you are tucking into your chocolate eggs.
Have a good Easter!
Ministers confirmed this week that they are considering setting a five-year time limit on permissions in principle (PiPs). This would be a matter for secondary legislation, peers learnt during further detailed consideration of the housing and planning bill.
This came during a marathon session of the legislation which kept peers up until half-past midnight on Tuesday night discussing the finer points of PiP and brownfield registers.
Government minister Baroness Williams of Trafford stressed that PiPs could not be granted retrospectively. She told the Upper Chamber: “Permission in principle, granted in allocation in locally prepared plans and registers, will apply only to those adopted once the permission in principle measure is fully in force.
“The government have no intention to apply the measure retrospectively to site allocations in existing local development plans. It will be possible to grant PiP only going forward, so existing plans and site allocations will not be affected”.
She insisted that decisions on PiPs would be a matter for local authorities, their communities and that the Secretary of State would have “no direct role in choosing specific sites to grant PiP to”.
The minister said there would be provision to modify or revoke a PiP, but only in “extreme circumstances”.
She also said that ministers would expect local authorities to make clear, when they give permission in principle “the matters they would expect to see covered in an application for technical details”.
She reiterated: “PiP will be granted only where the development is considered to be locally acceptable, in line with local and national policy”.
Peers were told that entering a site on a brownfield register “would not automatically grant permission in principle” according to another government minster Baroness Evans of Bowes Park.
Baroness Williams also told peers that the government’s plan to allow for planning fees to be set locally would not be subject to the hybrid procedure, rather the affirmative procedure: a much less time-consuming system.
View more information about the housing and planning bill
Roger Milne
The government has announced it will consult on the recommendations in the report of the Local Plans Expert Group until 27 April.
The report was published at the same time as the Budget last week. The Group reported an almost unanimous consensus about the problems facing local plan preparation.
These centre on agreeing housing need; difficulties with the duty to cooperate (including the distribution of unmet housing needs); a lack of political will and commitment; a lack of clarity on key issues, particularly SHMAs, strategic planning, green belt and environmental constraints; too many changes of policy, advice and factual changes in forecasts; and a lack of guidance, support and resources.
Developers and professional planners have given a broad welcome to the group’s proposals for shorter and faster plans which are more effective on growth and ensure proper community engagement.
President of the Royal Town Planning Institute Phil Williams said: “We want to see shorter, more proportionate and responsive, local plans and a greater focus on planning collaboratively across boundaries.
“Overall, the conclusions of the report will provide planners with greater certainty, for example, by allowing for judgments to be made on simpler evidence bases, and being subject to more flexible tests of soundness by the Inspectorate.
“We are also very pleased that the group has acknowledged the role that central government can play by taking steps to incentivise the development of growth points to ensure that housing needs are met”.
Ministers have made it clear that they want to see the planning system move towards a more zonal and ‘red lining’ approach where local authorities use their local plans to signal their development strategy from the outset and make maximum use of permissions in principle to give early certainty and reduce the number of stage developers must go through to get planning permission.
Roger Milne
Ministers have confirmed plans to provide greater flexibility over the deployment of mobile phone infrastructure by modifying the existing planning regime. This follows a consultation exercise carried out last year.
In a written parliamentary statement Planning Minister Brandon Lewis insisted the changes “were vital for our continued economic prosperity and social inclusion for all”.
He explained that where a site was already used for telecommunications infrastructure, permitted development rights would be extended to allow taller ground-based masts to be built.
“The threshold for new ground-based masts will increase from 15 metres to 25 metres in non-protected areas and a new permitted development right allowing new masts of up to 20 metres will be introduced in protected areas. “
He said that in order to ensure that there was “appropriate community engagement” a prior approval system would apply where a new mast was being built.
He went on to say that operators would also be able to increase the height of existing masts to 20 metres in both non-protected and protected areas without a prior approval; between 20 metres and 25 metres in non-protected areas with a prior approval.
Lewis also stated that operators would have a new automatic right to upgrade the infrastructure on their masts in protected areas to align with existing rights in non-protected areas. However, there will be a height restriction of 20 metres on highways and in residential areas.
He told MPs that the administration would lift restrictions on the number of antennae allowed on structures above 30 metres, while removing the prior approval requirement for individual antenna greater than six metres in height in non-protected areas and for two small cell antenna on residential premises in both non-protected and protected areas “as the visual impact is limited.”
Lewis promised the Commons that the Government would work with the industry and interested parties to strengthen the sector-owned code of practice to ensure best practice was always applied “when it comes to the siting and design of mobile infrastructure.”
The minister said the planning changes will come into effect from summer 2016 and would apply to England only.
Roger Milne
Planning Portal Blog 