The challenge
Tewkesbury is a diverse borough facing complex planning challenges including Article 4 directions, Green Belt restrictions, and conservation areas. This complexity was generating numerous phone enquiries from confused residents seeking quick answers about what development they could and couldn't do.
The planning team was spending significant time on repetitive, routine enquiries that could be answered through self-service, preventing officers from focusing on more complex casework. The free duty planner service meant that one day in every week a planning officer was focussing on answering general queries about whether planning permission was required. Only 22% of these appointments resulted in an application being received.
The digital-first solution
After seeing PlanX services in action at Buckinghamshire Council, Tewkesbury applied to join the Open Digital Planning (ODP) community and receive the Planning Software Improvement Fund, in early 2023. They have now launched four integrated services:
- Check if you need planning permission - Helping residents understand planning requirements for their projects.
- Check your planning constraints - Providing instant access to site-specific planning restrictions, providing more information on the impact of these and providing real world examples to provide more guidance.
- Check your heritage constraints - Identifying heritage considerations that may affect development.
- Report a planning breach - streamlining the reporting process when residents suspect a development hasn’t received planning permission.
The local authority has co-designed these services, tailoring it to their known user needs, in collaboration with a team of local authorities from across England, the service provider Open Systems Lab (OSL) and with coordination from Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government’s Digital Planning programme. It is custom-themed to match Tewkesbury's branding and designed with accessibility as standard, ensuring all residents can navigate planning processes independently.
Overcoming challenges
- Cultural shift: moving away from a traditional appointment-based service for residents to an online digital service required careful management of customer expectations.
- Building trust: Officers needed confidence in the system's accuracy. The team thoroughly tested the new services against historical cases, comparing PlanX recommendations with previous officer advice. The results showed the digital service was "incredibly similar or even better" than traditional methods.
Results
The impact has been substantial. The services now support 60 potential applicants per week getting the information they need, compared to just 5 weekly appointments previously available. Residents can access guidance any day of the week, receiving immediate responses to planning queries.
User feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with residents appreciating the user interface and the ability to get an automatic response rather than waiting weeks for a conversation. Officers can now focus their expertise on complex cases rather than routine enquiries.
The power of collaboration
Tewkesbury credits the Open Digital Planning community as essential to their success. Collaboration with councils including Doncaster, Barnet, Medway and Camden provided shared learning and problem-solving support.
“We wouldn't have been able to do it without the ODP community. Ask a question and someone has an answer. The community element in this work is massive.”
A member of the team at Tewkesbury Borough Council
Looking ahead
The council remains committed to expanding their digital planning offer.
Their experience demonstrates that comprehensive digital transformation in planning isn't just about individual services but creating an integrated system that serves different user needs while building internal capability and confidence.
Tewkesbury's journey shows how councils can successfully balance digital innovation with quality service delivery, creating better outcomes for both residents and planning teams.