Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

RE: LPA Refusing Applications by Email

2025-05-27T08:46:44Z

I'm not aware of LPAs refusing paper/email applications (not going to comment on the legality of that), but I am aware of some that are now charging admin fees for those (higher than the Planning Portal processing fee). Applications via the Planning Portal are significantly easier to process for the LPA.

Going unitary/LGR

2025-05-14T11:38:22Z

As you may be aware Surrey CC is hurtling towards going unitary and also splitting into two or three at the same time. I'm looking for any lessons learnt from those authorities that have already been through that transition, especially from a data and systems perspective.

I'm not so concerned about live applications (relatively easy to send files for the few current applications currently under consideration to relevant new authority), but more the historic data. Have authorities split and exported data or maintained it centrally somehow for all authorities to access?

Have authorities divested the County Reg 3 applications into the former District systems so they all Reg 3 are 'together', albeit in areas until those sytems are merged, or kept them in the former County system until an overall solution can be found?

I'm obviously aware there are many other dimensions around harmonising processes and policies - is that something to be tackled after LGR or are there useful prep discussions to be had around those?

RE: Alternative Developments on Same Site

2025-03-20T08:45:51Z

Not encountered that yet, but I would be tempted to go for option B, so that it's easier to do joint consultations/publicity, etc. rather than having to duplicate everything. On the other hand, however, it would certainly be cleaner to go for option A, especially if the decisions end up being different for each alternative. Also technically they could, I suppose, both be granted, in which case they may have different conditions that may cause difficulties to produce DNs in your system and if you use your system to discharge conditions could end up in all sorts of confusions...

RE: MasterGov system by Def and S106 monitoring

2024-09-25T11:28:20Z

We use MasterGov as a County Planning Authority, but not for S106 monitoring which is done externally.

@Gary I understand Central Bedfordshire is a unitary authority - I know Dorset and Cornwall use MasterGov as a unitary authorities if you can find contacts for them.

RE: Press Ad savings - Use QR code?

2024-07-03T15:52:29Z

Richard Crawley:

Hans Bray:

As a 2 tier county council (there are 21 of us) we spend less - Surrey CCs rounded up average spend for the last few years (exc covid year) is about £14k pa

Can I check what this means? Does it mean that 21 of you spend £14k/ea on average (=£294k) or that the county council by itself spends £14k? (or something else I have recently returned from holiday and I'm not sure my brain is working yet)

Sorry, Richard. Yes, £14k is just what Surrey CC spend, I don't know how that compares to other CPAs but if you're just doing a rough and ready estimate then adding the £294k on top of what you estimate for Districts totals is what I meant. Unitaries I guess would be different again...

I also just thought this is just what we spend on planning application publicity - as the County Highways Authority Surrey CC have to advertise a lot of road information too, I have no idea how much that would be or if you're interested in including that?

Hans

RE: Press Ad savings - Use QR code?

2024-07-02T11:42:10Z

As a 2 tier county council (there are 21 of us) we spend less - Surrey CCs rounded up average spend for the last few years (exc covid year) is about £14k pa

Hans

RE: Press Ad savings - Use QR code?

2024-06-23T09:57:29Z

I can sympathise with the costs and looking for savings. However, gvien newpaper ads are one of the backstops for those hard to reash audiences who are less likely to be digitally enabled, I'm not sure that a QR code replacement would meet an equality impact assessment for such a change - and I certainly wouldn't make such a drastic change without undertaking that assessment.

Hans

Surrey County Council

RE: Planning software systems

2023-06-26T09:32:07Z

Hi Tim,

I realise you said the back office is not your area, but do pass onto those that may be thinking about this that Dorset Council went unitary and aligned all their planning systems onto MasterGov over the last couple of years, if they need someone to talk to/pick brains of

MasterGov had their annual User Group meeting last week and demoed the new BNG aspects they are currently building... Basically imports the calculator spreadsheet into the planning record and then, as I understand it, allows it to be tracked in the Site Monitoring module after permission granted.

BNG is not my area, so I don't know whether it's what is required - I am sending some screenshots to our Ecologist.

RE: Planning software systems

2023-06-14T09:26:07Z

We use MasterGov. It integrates well with Esri/ArcGIS. The document management is integrated. Has good notification for case officers and workflow (which we haven't implemented yet). Very configurable. Good template system for letters etc. It also has modules for Enforcement, Site Monitoring, Appeals, Land Charges etc

The Planning Portal import needs improving (cannot import amends), but I understand that is being worked on this year.

What are you currently using?

RE: Site notices

2023-06-12T15:10:14Z

Thanks Carmel - yes, love the idea of embeded site plan, but I cannot think of a way of automating that sufficiently. Although some of the other metadata, such as area should be easily incorporated... thanks for sharing, definiely food for thought.

Site notices

2023-06-12T09:39:48Z

I'm assuming most authorities are still using Site Notices, despite central gov relentless 'war' on them?

We are looking to redisgn ours and would love to see some samples. We are going to incorporate a QR code to link to our online register. Has anyone done any analysis on whether they are used?

From the few I've seen there does seem to be a wide variety of layouts and content. We put Town and Country Planning Act 1990 at the top of ours (or other regs, as appropriate), but other authorities do not seem to - is it important or perhaps unnecessary technical detail?

As a county authority we also "have" to put the district authority address and website (for the official planning register), I do wonder if this causes more confusion than help - I would welcome any CPA's views on that too.

RE: Voter ID and Neighbourhood Plans

2023-06-07T08:56:43Z

According to this page on GOV.UK you do

How to vote : Photo ID you'll need - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

RE: Active Travel England Consultation

2023-05-22T14:53:00Z

They also provided the following email address for general enquiries Contact@activetravelengland.gov.uk

And "For updates on publications prior to 01 June, I recommend keeping an eye on our social media where we will make announcements regarding uploads to our website."

Application processing/procedures

2021-09-07T10:04:24Z

We are about to undertake a review of our planning application processing - having now just about recovered from the shock of going digital overnight.

I would be interest to see any other authority's documentation or workflows if any of you are willing/able to share.

Attached is our basic overview process diagram I have produced as a starter for discussion in our review. You will see I have identified 3 phases of application lifecycle, my intention is to work on each phase separately with the teams to update/refine/etc.

Note we are a CPA, so do not have the volume of applications to make a separate validation resource viable; also we don't hold official planning registers, so need processes to send material to our districts for that purpose.

Online petitions

2021-03-16T10:08:31Z

Has anyone developed any policies for handling online petitions as reps?

In a traditional rep-petition we have been sent the text and a list of names etc. which we can quantify and the case office can reflect in their report. With an online petition the numbers signing it constantly changes up to the report deadline (and beyond) and certainly on change.org petitions those signing it can also leave extra comments.

1) Should those be treated as additional reps and analysed/reported as such?

The main issue being the time it would take to process these if the petition with hundreds of extra comments is dropped on us just before our cut-off point there is not the resources to analyse them.

Our current approach is that for committee items we have a cut-off of non the working day before committee for items to be reflected at committee via an update sheet. Anything received after that still has to be analysed and taken into consideration before the decision is issued in case anything material emerges, as we would feel open to JR if we did not take them into account before releasing the decision.

2) Is there guidance we should issue to petition organisers around timing, closing dates/deadlines, etc. We wouldn't want to be seen to unduly limit the opportunity to comment.

Just as a footnote, I work in a CPA so large Minerals & Waste applications can be in 'consultation' phase for months (or even years), so we cannot treat the original consultation period on the site notice as being a rigid limit.

Planning process flow diagram

2021-01-28T12:50:13Z

I was asked to produce an overview flow diagram of our planning process, mainly for internal Reg 3 project managers, but it may have broader/wider applications. If anyone would find it useful to tweak/adapt then I can share the original Visio files...

Feedback also welcome.

Taking credit card payments (transaction fees)

2020-11-04T09:28:17Z

To try and bring ourselves into at least the 20th Century we have started accepting payment of fees online (as we're a CPA this is mainly for fees that cannot go via Planning Portal, such as Minerals applications). We decided to use GOV.UK pay as that was a simple option that our IT dept were willing to implement. What nobody told us until after launch was the transaction fees for using the service - all through testing these had been 0).

The fees are not huge <1% but for large applications where the fees are often in the £000s that is still a significant amount compared to handling cheques (unknown, largely 'hidden costs' of manual handling - but 'fixed' cost rather than %age).

I know other authorities accept card payment online/over the phone. Do they just absorb the transaction cost? I realise most businesses would just see this as part of the 'cost of doing business', but it's causing waves of issues here... Is the fact that we do not actually receive the full statutory amount of the planning fee a problem?

I assume that the Planning Portal absorb the transaction fees as part of their £25 service charge they impose on the applicant for using their system, because they always transfer us the full fee due.

We cannot calculate the cost and charge the applicant the fee, because it varies depending on the type of card used (unknown until they pay).

Any thoughts/justifications/internal discussions/agreements with management about this issue would be interesting to hear.

Site notices and adverts

2020-08-03T10:57:21Z

I am currently trying to redesign our site notice template(s). I have seen a few examples from other LPAs but not all put them on their online planning register it seems.

1) please do send me example(s) of site notices

2) I've seen the 'exemplar' in schedule 3 of DMPO 2015, which leaves a lot to be desired. I'm also trying to make it compatible with the September accessibility regs, by using headings, etc.

3) Many site notices I've seen don't mention the legislation our current one only mentions TCP 1990, which doesn't seem necessary... but thoughts on that specifically would be welcome.

4) Attached is a mockup for a new design. My main concerns are whether a) this would also work as a newspaper advert copy and b) the legislation must be cited.

Thanks

Accessibility of planning documents

2020-03-20T11:52:49Z

Hello, with the new public sector accessibility requirement law coming into force in September I have been assessing what we need to do.

Preliminary thoughts are that PDFs published on that planning register which come from a third party, i.e. applicant/rep/consultee, etc. and we are just re-presenting/publishing it - we have an exemption from responsible for the accessibility of that document. Although there is an interesting grey line if we perform document redactions...

Documents we produce and publish on the planning register, such as site notices, officer reports, neighbour information notes, decision notices must be accessible. As these are usually generated from Word templates it is those templates that need to be made accessible so when converted to PDF they are correct. However, there are complex interrelations between the planning software, Word and case officers/technicians local 'Normal' templates.

Is this on anyone else's radar/already looked at this?

GDPR PCNs and sharing data

2019-11-13T11:43:18Z

We are trying to get our Data Protection/Privacy statements correct for our PCNs. In particular because we're not a unitary authority and therefore need to share data with or get data from the county's boroughs and districts.

So far we have agreed :

This information is being collected and held on the lawful basis of a public task (in accordance with the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, as amended, related orders and regulations and other related legislation) for the purpose of gathering information on the use of land under the Act. As such we do not require your consent to process and retain your data. The data you provide on this form will become part of the official enforcement history of a site and is therefore retained indefinitely.

However, when it come to sharing that information with the borough/district or vice versa our legal team are questioning whether it's the same public task (because the borough district need information on local matters and we as the county need information on waste matters). There are cases that have been lost at court because both types of matters were not handled simultaneously, but GDPR seems to prevent the natural sharing of that data collected between the authorities because the TCP specifically says authority (singular). We're now going round in circles on this. We want to avoid both borough/district AND county issuing separate PCNs because the landowner would then be able to play one off against the other and say information already provided.

My view is that if the person served with the PCN is informed about the potential for sharing data, if necessary, then that would cover us. So adding:

Your data may be shared with other authorities where necessary, including the borough or district council where the land is situated and the Environment Agency. In the event of enforcement action then the data may be used as evidence in court, if necessary.

(or even insert the specific borough/district name if that's clearer... but more error prone and it would be better for this to be built into the template).

We would also provide the URLs to the full privacy policy and enforcement protocols.

Anyone have thoughts or know how it's handled in their area?