Dorset County Council

Outcome of Expression of Interest: Invited to apply

A number of LA’s use the tool Planning Portal to support a digital planning application process. A number of LA’s (like us) will have heavily promoted this tool and although it offers more than just an upload facility, this is definitely a preferred method to both submit and receive applications.

We have recently been given the news that Planning Portal are now going to charge end users a £20 fee for submitting applications online. They have taken this decision as they are no longer in a position to run this as a free service.

We believe a number of LA’s are in a similar position and would benefit from working on a solution to ensure that our end users aren’t financially influenced over how they submit an application (particularly when some application fees are as low as £34 which would mean that a £20 submission fee wouldn’t be viable).

We can’t do this work alone, or necessarily be the lead council, as we are entering into a unitary authority in Dorset in less than six months. However, we believe that a number of organisations will be in a similar position and would like to take this opportunity as five LA’s who are affected in Dorset to support the work to find a solution for this problem.

  • Digital leadership training (for council leaders, service managers or senior executives)
  • Agile for teams