Unitary authorities hook up for online applications

Four unitary authorities have recently taken a major step towards greater efficiency by fully integrating their planning back-office systems with the Portal’s online application service.

This means online applications are now retrieved automatically into their own IT systems.

The move – by Cornwall Council, Chester West & Chester Council, Chester East Council and Northumberland County Council – means they no longer have to manually retrieve online applications and re-key the information into their systems for registration and validation. The change does not affect the submission process for applicants.

This will help the authorities make greater efficiency and resource savings from working electronically and allow other planning processes to be streamlined.

These larger unitary authorities were created in April 2009 following a Local Government Review in which many councils were merged.

We will now be working with each of the authorities aiming to promote online application submission.

This has already started at Cornwall Council, which has written to all agents who submit by paper to encourage them to go online and has introduced an agent accreditation service for online applications.