We are on a mission to improve the planning application system.
Lambeth council is leading on a project to make it quicker and easier
for people to submit planning applications. The project is funded by
MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government),
‘Reducing Invalid Planning Applications' (RIPA) is an open,
collaborative project. One of its aim is to improve the current
planning application submission process and bring the system into the
21st century. Hopefully, this will save time and money for applicants
and councils when submitting planning applications.
We completed our Alpha phase in March 2020 and we’ve now moved
into Beta. Some of you may have responded to our Alpha call out. We
were unable to meet everyone, but we hope this won’t deter you from
offering up your time to test for the Beta stage. We are working in
partnership with five other Local Authorities: Buckinghamshire,
Camden, Lewisham, Northumberland, and Southwark. The current system is
confusing, opaque and requests applicants to have to look at multiple
resources to work out what is needed to submit a planning application.
The hope is that the tool will allow applicants to submit valid
planning applications on their first attempt.
The design aims to help them navigate the process so that they
don’t need to reference multiple different websites etc. The end
product we hope will reduce the number of invalid planning
applications submitted to the council and also save time and money for
both applicants and councils. The design will bring the planning
application service into the digital era. We need your feedback to
help us improve the design.
Our initial focus was on Householder planning applications, but
we will be widening that to include Minor type applications soon. We
are at the stage of testing our Beta phase of the prototype with those
who might use the new digital planning application service in the
future e.g. planning agents, architects & residents.
We want to better understand how you would engage with the new
online system being developed and capture your feedback. Our
independent User Researcher will contact you and arrange a remote
research session. We will observe your responses to her questions and
get your feedback about how you found the experience and what you
think could be improved. We would greatly appreciate your input on
this project.
If you would be interested in taking part, please fill in this
form at the link below. It will only take a couple of minutes to complete:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfj8mnmF1Rb90cU6TqZLzrQUTOBYXf97XnY2WkEq4Q2e61XHA/viewform
All trial sessions will be conducted remotely online. To find out
more about the project, visit https://www.ripa.digital.
For help or questions please contact Ho Lam our independent User
Researcher on the project: h.lam@circlestrategicdesign.com.
