Visual Guide to loft conversions now live!

Today the Portal is pleased to announce the launch of the visual guide to loft conversions.  It has nine slides to reflect the increased number of limits and conditions compared to porches. You can see the final version of the new product here.

Key Features

• Graphical representation of common projects affected by new PD rules
• Text and visuals showing limits and proximities
• Clear summary checklist at the end
• Printable PDF summary documents for users and LPAs

Watch this space for further new visual guides from the Planning Portal content team.

Technical updates – some you might have missed

MasterMap Update
At the start of October, we updated the 1:1250 map data, which contains buildings, roads, water, etc, to the current version.

PDF Fees Summary
Responding to LPA requests we have also recently delivered the PDF fees summary; a document that sets out how applicant’s calculated their application fee.

and finally.
If you’d like to keep an eye on our performance you’ll need to read our:

Service Report
The Service Report, which is published on the Planning Portal, contains monthly, quarterly and annual statistics and information on performance and customer satisfaction.

Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC)

The Portal is has been working with the IPC to ensure it realised a web presence from 1st October which is up and running well. The website is an interim solution for IPC which contains information on who they are, what they do and how to contact them. It also provides IPC with a newsletter subscription process and access to post news items. This will be in place until March 2010 at which point it will have been redesigned to include greater functionality.

IPC held its launch event in London on Thursday 22 October in front of more than 100 stakeholders including NGO’s, local authorities and promoters. John Healey MP, Minister for Housing and Planning gave the key note speech backing the IPC.

The Planning Portal organised a live video link event so that the IPC staff in Bristol were able to be a part of the event.

New Feature – keep up to date with CLG news

I’ve added a feed to the left hand column that will aggregate content updates from the CLG site.
The feed includes articles from the “consultation”, “articles” and “what’s new” feeds.
Let me know if it’s useful.
Chris

More on extensions to extant permissions & non-material amends

On Thursday 1st October, CLG introduced two new application forms:

• Application for a new planning permission to replace an extant planning permission, in order to extend the time limit for implementation.  Application for replacement of associated listed building and/or conservation area consents in order to extend the time limit for implementation.  Town and Country Planning Act 1990.  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990.
• Application for a non-material amendment following a grant of planning permission.  Town and Country Planning Act 1990

Steve Quartermain, CLG’s Chief Planner has issued a letter which contains information and and answers to FAQs.

First in a series of householder guides published

We have recently published the first in a series of guides to planning for the most popular householder building projects.

The guides provide easy to understand, visual walk-throughs of the permitted development limits and conditions for common projects such as porches, extensions and loft conversions.
The guides support Killian Pretty Review recommendations and aim to help citizens understand the regent changes to the permitted development regime.
You can access the guidance on porches, a guide to extensions will follow soon.

New Account Manager for the South East

We’ve now made the key appointment of a new account manager for the South-East of England.
Ashley Jones has joined the Portal from private practice and is a chartered building surveyor.
His previous role involved carrying out general building surveying and heading up the architectural design side of the business. He has plenty of experience of submitting online planning applications too.
Ashley is here to help LPA’s and agents in any way that increases take-up of Portal services, in particular online applications and the roll-out of the e-Consultation Hub.
Please get in touch if you’d like help from Ashley or any of our lovely account managers.

Infrastructure upgrade now live! – Hurrah

Hurrah we’re live, if everything looks and works the same as it did on Friday we’ve been successful.

The idea of this stage of our biggest I.T change since we launched in 2002 was not to rock your world but to stabilise ours.

Many months of work between the Portal team and our technical partners IBM, Adobe and others has delivered a new technical infrastructure (Hardware and Software platform) and hosting environment for the Portal.

The service embraces newer, greener, technologies to deliver scalable and resilient services that will provide greater flexibility to meet future opportunities in support of the e-Planning agenda and futures changes and upgrades to Portal services. We anticipate saving more than 30% on power consumption alone.

The new service also paves the way for application software upgrades and enhanced content management tools to improve the presentation of information to Portal users.
The countdown to Portal 2.0 begins now….

Thanks to everybody involved.
Chris

If you want to know all the techie stuff

e-Consultation Hub Work stream 5a – Improving LPA Processing

The e-Consultation Hub, recommended for national adoption by the Killian Pretty Review, was formally launched in autumn 2008 by the Planning Portal on behalf of CLG. Expected to help drive and enhance the Government’s modernisation agenda, the Hub has been introduced to provide all of the national stakeholders in the planning process with the capability to complete both their internal and external consultation online.

Killian Pretty projects

 

The Killian Pretty Review made a number of recommendations aimed at improving the planning process.

The Killian Pretty Review Final Report and the Government’s response can be found on the Planning Portal on this page.

The Portal, on behalf of CLG, has been asked to lead on a number of the recommendations under separate work streams.