Processing of Planning Applications
Over the next few weeks, Development Services will start making wider use of email communications for planning application submissions. Where customers provide us with an email address we will use this as the primary means of communication with them where possible.
Online application service
South Gloucestershire Council are working with the Planning Portal to improve the service we provide to our customers by increasing the use of electronic working practices. This includes the promotion of the Planning Portal online application service.
The Planning Portal website (link found in “Other websites”) contains a number of useful resources that are there to assist customers in submitting their first online application.
Implementation of new Planning and Building Control Public and Consultee Access (PACA) online system
During June South Gloucestershire Council will be implementing a replacement online search planning application facility. The new system will replace the existing service and offers a variety of enhancements to the customer and result in reduced double handling by Council Officers.
The implementation will take place in two phases. The first being the introduction of Public Access side of the system, which will cover all the functionality of the current system but include improvements to the search features, the level of detail retrieved in connection with an application and the addition of a mapping tool. The second phase, scheduled for July/August, will include the Consultee Access solution, where our statutory consultees will be invited to make use of the many benefits the system offers, including case management functionality.
Another exciting benefit of the public access system is the introduction of the search Building Control applications online service.
Useful Guide
Development Services have developed a useful guide on the type and standard of plans and drawings that may need to be submitted in support of a planning application. Further details can be found on the planning application forms and guidance page of the website.
Development Services Planning Application Survey
In November last year, Development Services carried out a survey of our regular planning agents inviting them to provide us with feedback about our application validation process and to tell us how easy or difficult they found submitting an application to South Gloucestershire Council. We also took the opportunity to find out the methods our customers use when submitting planning applications.
The information gathered from the survey will help us to formulate our priorities for the coming year, plan improvements to our website and online services and assist us in planning our future service development.
Many thanks to those who took the trouble of completing a questionnaire and returning it to us. In the coming weeks we will publish details of our planned changes in response to your comments.
Adoption of revised Local Planning Application Requirements
Following consultation in the summer with regular users of our planning service, parish and town councils and statutory consultees, we have now approved a revised local list of planning applications requirements.
The revision has been carried out in response to the Government direction that Local Planning Authorities review their validation checklists to ensure a more proportionate approach when requesting information.
As a result South Gloucestershire Council has adopted a local PAR list which has been reduced by 30%, in keeping with the Government’s intentions that the bureaucracy and red tape associated with submitting a planning application should be reduced for the benefit of customers. We believe this reduction will not have any adverse impact on the overall quality of the applications being submitted.
Details of the adopted local Planning Application Requirements can be found in the ‘read more’ section of this page.
A full list of the national and local planning application requirements, along with the associated guidance can be found on our planning application forms web pages.
We also plan to produce a series of mini validation guides, based on the revised lists that will target many of the more common types of development, and which should further simplify the application process for many of our customers.