About this blog

This blog is written and maintained by Chris Kendall, director of the Planning Portal. I blog here in a professional and occasionally a personal capacity.

The purpose of the blog is to reach out and engage with users of the service and of the planning system in general.

Posts here will be about changes and improvements to the Portal and the planning system. I hope to use it as a forum for your ideas on what works and what doesn’t work about the service. Please give me your feedback.

About the Planning Portal

The Planning Portal was launched in 2002 and received its first electronic planning application in April 2003.

By the end of the third quarter of 2011 it was processing 55.6 per cent of all planning applications in England and Wales.

In April 2008 the Portal completed the 1APP project which wiped away decades of inconsistency in the planning process, replacing locally variable planning application forms with a set of standard national forms.

This achievement was recognised in 2008 when the Portal was singled out by the Government Chief Information Officer as an exemplar in his introduction to the Transformational Government report and the Portal was also awarded the Public Value award at the Whitehall and Westminster World Civil Service Awards (see right).

Increasingly, the Portal has become a primary channel for communicating and implementing key policy issues to stakeholders and users of the system and it is playing a key role readying LPAs and business for economic recovery by ensuring the best use of IT to streamline the planning and building process.

The Planning Portal provides services to citizens and businesses, the broad commercial planning and building sectors and all English and Welsh Local Planning Authorities (LPAs), delivering timely, accurate and accessible information and tools that are helping to demystify planning and building regulations.

In February 2012 the one millionth application was submitted through the Planning Portal.

About Chris Kendall

First let me say I’m not a planner but I empathise with planners and passionately believe that we can help make planning easier and more efficient for everybody.

I’ve been Director of the Planning Portal since March 2006 having joined the Portal in 2002. Like many of the Portal team I came for 18 months for the experience and stayed for the challenge.

Outside work I’m married with four kids and a dog. I love to cook and hang out with my youngest boy. It’s not that he’s my favourite, it’s that the others have grown up and gone.

I’m a Yorkshireman and follow Bradford Bulls Rugby League team and Bradford City FC and play golf (I’m the organiser for the Civil Service Sports Council, South West Golf) and I’m always up for a round if you’re asking!