Calling all citizens (Not planning professionals) who have submitted a planning application in the last 12 months

[sonal]

I am a User Researcher working on behalf of Cogworx in conjunction with several local councils across England to improve how people apply for planning permission online. This work is part of the Open Digital Planning community, which brings councils, practitioners, and residents together to design better, more consistent digital planning services. You can find out more about this work at https://opendigitalplanning.org.

 

We’re recruiting participants for our next round of user research, which will take place on Mon 22nd and Tues 23rd June.  The sessions will be online and last up to one hour. If you agree, you will only need to attend one of the sessions - I will DM you to arrange the most suitable time and date

 

For this round of research, we’re particularly interested in hearing from everyday householders who have applied for planning permission in the last 12 months.  

 

Before the session, you may be asked to complete a small amount of pre-reading, which will take no more than 15 minutes. During the session itself, you’ll be guided through a set of tasks. The session is a test of our design work, not a test of you. We’re looking for honest feedback to help us make the digital service easier and more effective to use.

 

To thank you for your time, a voucher will be provided after the session.

 

If you’re interested in taking part, please respond to this post and we’ll send you a short form to fill in and then we can take it from there.  If we can’t fit you in this time we will reach out to you again in the future. 

Edited yesterday at 11:06 by jack
Formatting

[Gus Potter]

10 hours ago, sonal said:

You can find out more about this work

Nice idea, I've looked at your link,  but it's a pile of mince. 

 

The facts are. Building Control and Planning are two council departments that can actually make a profit. But any profit they make gets hived off to pay for other services, it does not get reinvested. If it was it would solve a lot of the structural problems we have. 

 

Planning and BC have a major recruitment problem. Because of this graduates can see that there is no real route to promotion, for talented folk its not a career option.  

 

Your idea is just tying to polish a turd. We need to first make the job attractive, no amount of digital stuff is going to solve the fundamental problem. 

 

I can tell you this as I deal with Planners and BC in my day job. If you want to make you idea a success then you need to address the fundamental issue I've just pointed out.

 

 

[saveasteading]

I'm not even opening the links as am suspicious.

 

You are appointed by some councils? Which? On what basis?

 

You will provide a voucher?

What for? That sounds suspicious.

 

What status will any responses have? 

 

Who are cogworx? Do they know you are doing this?

 

And more detail while you are at it.

[Bancroft]

12 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

Planning and BC have a major recruitment problem. Because of this graduates can see that there is no real route to promotion, for talented folk its not a career option.  

 

Your idea is just tying to polish a turd. We need to first make the job attractive, no amount of digital stuff is going to solve the fundamental problem. 

 

I can tell you this as I deal with Planners and BC in my day job. If you want to make you idea a success then you need to address the fundamental issue I've just pointed out.

 

Agree, we had four different Planning Officers from Pre-App to final Decision (and I think all of them were only part time, 2-3 days/week). 

 

I'd also add that, from the perspective of someone suffering planning over the last 18 months, I'd say the biggest issue is trust and confidence in the system.  No amount of 'full stack' back office tools, 'resource efficiency', or 'feedback tools' are going to change this (I'm quoting management phrases from the MHCLG Digital website here...).  Trying to have a discussion with anyone in the planning department was almost impossible - it's almost as if the Council had a 'no communications' policy (they certainly don't publish an Org Chart of names/telephone numbers).

 

I applaud any efforts to improve the system but I think focusing almost exclusively on tech (as this initiative seems to be doing) is probably not the best way forward.  Talk to people face to face, don't 'guide them through a set of tasks'.

[mjc55]

Absolutely agree with @Bancroft, its the personal aspect of the planning process that has gone to pot.

 

I changed career in 2009 and did a AT degree and after qualifying worked for myself until I retired in about 2021. I lived and worked in Wiltshire and from around 2005 - when I was renovating a couple of houses - to when I started submitting planning apps in around 2012 things had changed significantly.  I used to be able to pop round to a council office in Trowbridge, chat through my plans with a planning officer and get valuable feedback when I doing the developments.  By the time I was submitting plans as an AT communicating with planning officers was starting to be difficult.  When I did a couple of planning applications for friends after I had retired in about 2023 the PO that visited site was a trainee, had to submit his findings to a senior planning officer (who could not be communicated with directly).

 

For our planning application for our build in Dorset the job of communicating with the planning department was pretty much impossible.  There seemed to be only one planning officer dealing with apps in our area and he just continually kicked the can down the road.  It was only by complaining and going over his head did we eventually get the application approved.

 

Something has to change, certainly the staffing issue seems to be the main area of difficulty and until this is addressed then I suspect that nothing will improve.

[Spinny]

1 hour ago, Bancroft said:

Planning and BC have a major recruitment problem.

Yes agree also.

Council budgets are overwhelmed with care requirements for the ageing baby boomers. Funding for planning and building control therefore seems to get stripped back. No doubt the desire to automate and go more electronic is borne out of this - i.e. cutting council spend and cutting planning and control services.

 

In addition the previous generation of baby boomer planners with many years of experience and knowlege are disappearing to be replaced by youngsters on low wages and little to no actual planning knowledge and experience. And they struggle to even recruit these youngsters with constant staff shortages. Planning officer I dealt with had zero knowledge of all the issues around building at boundaries - party wall act, boundary dispute law, trespass law, right to light, etc.

 

You won't solve this by thinking you can reduce it to a monkey pressing a keyboard on 'the system'. The planning system is poacher and gamekeeper. If you reduce the gamekeeper to a monkey on a keyboard you are going to get huge amounts of poaching, bad buildings, and huge public dissatisfaction with planning decisions.

 

(And I strongly suspect this is like so many cost cutting initiatives I have seen, which actually amount to just transferring work from a department out to the user of that service. Moving the work of using the system from the planning and control departments to the planning applicant will be a disaster for the planning process - some planning applicants do lie and deceive their way through the system you know.

Edited 55 minutes ago by Spinny