In April 2019 Dorset Council became a unitary authority. This reorganisation combined district, borough and county councils. All six organisations had their own versions of planning management software from two different suppliers.
The planning system needs to provide a modern service to enable Dorset to grow economically. Backlogs of planning applications and validations also needed to be addressed.
The challenge was to combine policies, people, users, processes and software into a one team system capable of delivering excellent customer service while supporting the growth and regeneration of the county.
Working with employees, councillors, architects, surveyors and planning agents a three-step approach was developed to transform the service:
- Deal with the current backlog
- Implement a single system
- Improve communication
Dealing with the backlog
An agency has been employed to concentrate on clearing the back log. They have made good progress clearing the validation backlog which was affecting the former West Dorset and Weymouth areas. They will now clear the validation backlog affecting former Purbeck and East Dorset areas. Their progress will be monitored.
A review to improve validation criteria and to ensure that they are consistently applied.
A plan is being created to use technology to help prevent a return of the backlog.
A single system
A new system will be in place mid-September. There will be phases of implementation for the different areas with a complete system by March 2021.
All core planning, land charges and building control will use the same system, database and mapping data.
Improve communication
Work is continuing to improve communications. A clearer website, use of chatbots and automatic checking will help to achieve this. Consistency across all the work is essential.
Cllr David Walsh, Dorset Council’s Portfolio Holder for Planning, said;
“It is incredibly important to make sure all aspects of our planning process run as smoothly and efficiently as it can. It’s been a challenge to combine six different organisations processes and capabilities. The team is working very hard to ensure we have a modern, consistent customer-focused service.”
Will historical planning data for Portland be available online (Weymouth and Portland Borough Council) as access to much of it has been impossible when I have searched for items that were accessible before the merger. Previous applications provide important historical information for researchers about works to local land and buildings that is often not available in other ways and not everyone is able to access information held on paper at Dorset Council offices (even beforeany additional restrictions imposed because of Covid19). How far back will the online data go, and when will it be accessible? Many thanks.
Hi Helena,
Sorry for the delay in responding to you. The issues seems to be mainly a data protection:
Former WD,WP, ND – Documents with a DocType of ‘OTHER’ have been configured/set to ‘SENSITIVE’, This is due to mixture of multiple documents being scanned as one document and require checking and redacting. When we receive data request for the documents, they are split, redacted and made public.
Former WD, WP Public Access has been configured to not:-
Display applications and documents dated prior to the 1st January 1994. This is to block other documents, such as Planning Application forms that have not been redacted and other sensitive data.
Former WP, WD Beginning of 2019 we went live with Idox public access. Due the previous in-house developed public facing planning website was built on software that was out of date and no longer supported. A decision was made not to migrate the comments for determined application, public and consultee. In line with retention schedule, and we would had to manually load all the comments. Officers reports were migrated, they contain summary of comments.
Former WD,WP, ND Appeal Decisions – A decision was made to mark them “Sensitive” and to direct customers to the PINS website. At the end 2018 – The ICO come back about the case referred to them about publication of appeals and whilst not found in breach as such the ICO have referred to the fact that we have taken action to remove and redact such documents.
Please can residents have email notification and access to planning applications list in their locality. This used to be available for some years in East Dorset but has not been possible in recent years.
Thank you for this notice in the Dorset Council news email. I look forward to further information.