The future of planning is undoubtedly digital. It won’t come as a surprise to hear this coming from the Planning Portal – after all, we’ve been transforming planning and building for nearly 20 years. It is perhaps more surprising however, that our view is that the digital future of planning doesn’t just rely on technology, but on the industry and government coming together to enable the transformation.

The Planning for the Future white paper published last year shone a light on a process which is ‘inefficient’, ‘opaque’ and has ‘poor outcomes’. It also painted the vision of a planning system which is ‘more efficient, effective and equitable’. We support this grand ambition and the work of this taskforce to define a roadmap to help achieve this.

Of particular interest to us, of course, is the development management process. The launch of the Planning Portal nearly 20 years ago revolutionised the procedure, standardising the way planning applications were submitted across England and Wales and over time transforming a paper-based method into a digital one. Today around 90 per cent of applications go through our ‘1App’ planning application service to nearly 400 councils across England and Wales. And so, whilst we are clear on how the Planning Portal can lead the way in delivering the future of planning, we are also mindful of our responsibility not to break a process which functions, however imperfectly.

As technology has moved on, so has our service and we will shortly be launching our latest (and fourth) platform. It will be a modern, agile platform to support the full digitalisation of the wider planning system in England and Wales. Critically, for us that means a service which is:

• Joined-up, from pre-app to building completion, to view a development as a project rather than a collection of individual applications;
• Interoperable with other systems, to enable data to flow more efficiently back and forth through the process and provide transparency for all parties;
• Spatially aware, to ensure system-level validation is relevant to a particular development in a specific place.

The new platform will give us the building blocks for change, but the overall ambition will take longer to achieve, in part because of the legacy technology in place across a hugely dispersed number of systems and in part because, in truth, even modern technology can only take us part of the way.

The challenges of legacy technology and particularly the integration between the Planning Portal and around 400 councils can’t be underestimated.  With a multitude of systems and suppliers, changing the integration will take councils’ time and money, both of which they can ill afford. So, to give some context, we are effectively building a platform akin to super-fast broadband, but having to make sure it still works on dial-up. 

Some may question whether it would be better for each council to go it alone and create a system which perfectly fits their needs, but that question belies the huge commitment required to transition to and maintain such a system, which needs updating as planning and other legislation changes, and needs to be constantly monitored, maintained and improved. It also ignores the fact that around 85 per cent of applications are submitted by agents who operate across multiple authorities and above all need consistency to make the process efficient for them and their clients, whether they be homeowners, business owners or developers.

Next year, a new Planning Portal will launch in Northern Ireland using the same technology platform as in England and Wales, but configured to meet their rules. This has the opportunity to give us a taste of what the future of planning may look like on this side of the water as the project is not challenged by retrofitting to existing technology. This is partly because planning applications cannot currently be submitted online in the region, meaning there is no legacy integration to council IT systems to manage, but also because the project has taken an end-to-end approach to the regional planning system. This means that the council planning systems will integrate to the public-facing submission and consultation services in real-time, improving communication on the application process and transparency to applicants, agents, councils, any interested members of the public and consultees.

So, whilst this will undoubtedly give us a glimpse of what the future may look like, it is also clear from our unique perspective in the market, that the overall ambition for the future of planning can only be fully realised if planning policy and the decision-making process changes. A more efficient planning system means a degree of automation for run-of-the-mill planning decisions. Though we recognise that not every planning decision could or should be automated, we do believe there is the opportunity to automate smaller, more straightforward applications and free planners to do what they do best, that is creating places where people want to live and work. 

In order to achieve this, planning policies, rules and data related to land and property have to be made machine-readable, data standards must be common at national level and the necessary data made openly available. We welcome MHCLG’s leadership in this area, alongside their aspiration to create planning rules which are objective, consistent and can therefore be turned into ‘code’. Through our responses to the white paper consultation and the parliamentary committee’s related call for evidence, we have urged government to think more broadly however and to consider legislation which still harks back to paper-based processes. We cited, for example, ‘lodging a cheque’ as the basis for when the clock starts on determining an application, or requiring an application to be on ‘a form published by the Secretary of State (or a form to substantially the same effect)’, when the only such form is a PDF of a printed version with no associated validation. 

There is a long way to go to achieve this and much still to do.  It will require focus and collaboration across the industry and with government, as well as support for the development of new skills to embrace the technology and make best use of it. The Planning Portal will be ready for it, and we will play our part in helping to achieve the future of planning.