In response to Marks comments re the lack of challenge in the document http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/uploads/PT_the_building_block_01.pdf referrred to in my blog http://portaldirector.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/improving-lpa-planning-websites/ We were tasked to gather feebdack from LPAs and users and to come up with some simple guidance that could be applied by LPAs with either little or no budget or little or no resource. During the process we found that in many cases the planning web pages were managed by the planners themselves, many of whom had very little web publishing experience. We also found there to be a very wide variation between the worst and best performing LPAs in terms of the quality of service offered. We therefore geared the guidance to those that could benefit most (the poorer services) assuming that those such as Wakefield who have the vision and capability would be less likely to need the help. I agree with Marks comments, however I would add a note of caution in the rush to Web 2.0 everything, don't forget that the average planning customer is probably not quite as au fait with the latest widgets and apps as those of us in the trade. Most come with a straightforward task in mind and want to complete it as simply and easily as possible, and that should be our goal. The plan for DirectGov is a simple one. We will continue to develop planning content and services as we do now. Post March and our relaunch, our new virtualisation capability means that we will be able to 'clone' the Portal and offer up a DirectGov branded version containing just the citizen content. This will be linked to from headers on the main DirecGov site. LPAs will continue to link directly to the central content provided by the Portal as they do today and the Portal will continue as a standalone site. Finally we are now also in the process of working with a number of LPAs to develop locally branded versions of the Portal, delivering citizen facing content on our platform but with LPA branding.
