Digital Planning Register

One simple system that meets all a planner’s needs

The Digital Planning Register simplifies the process for planners to incorporate public feedback into their assessments by synchronising with your local authorities' back office system.

How it works for Local Planning Authorities

While workflows may vary across Local Planning Authorities, here’s a general outline:

• Automated updates: Planning application details are automatically fetched from the back office system into the Digital Planning Register content management system for easy access.
• Editable content: Planners can review, edit, or supplement the information to make sure it’s accurate and complete.
• Public engagement: Planners can publish finalised Digital Site Notices to inform and engage the community.
• Continuous updates: Any changes or progress to the development proposal can be updated on the Digital Planning Register, keeping residents informed throughout the planning process.
• Analyse feedback: Structured feedback from residents is sent to your back office system, where you’ll be able to access it for review.
• Incorporate feedback: This feedback can be directly used in planning assessments to reflect community input.

For residents, it makes it easy to:

• Discover planning applications in their area
• Understand proposals with at-a-glance information on site characteristics, intended use, and potential impact
• Learn about the data with clear explanations of estimations and calculations
• Voice their opinions and comments on various aspects quickly and easily
• See how feedback is utilised, including insights into what's most valuable
• Dive deeper with additional details and engagement opportunities for those interested
• Stay updated on any application’s progress through the planning stages
  
   

Why this tool is important

Why this tool is important

Local planning authorities have a duty to publish all validated applications, meaning a public-facing register is needed. Residents can feel uncertain about how their input can influence neighbourhood development and our system presents information in an easy and accessible way, allowing people to comment effectively.

Often, Local Planning Authorities use physical site notices to advertise planning applications, but these can be easily overlooked and offer limited details, hindering public engagement.

The current approach to consultations and sharing information fails to engage a broad spectrum of the community. This results in feedback that lacks diversity. Without clear guidelines, residents tend to provide feedback that is more critical than constructive – focusing on aspects that planners may find challenging to incorporate, or that are outside their scope. This situation leads to a perception among the community that their contributions are undervalued.

Aiming for better things

We want to make planning better for everyone. Some of our aims are:

• Making it easy for residents by helping people quickly understand and get involved in shaping their neighbourhood.
• Creating less work for planners by cutting down on the time they spend fixing errors and sorting through feedback.
• Giving planners more balanced feedback – incorporating positive and negative comments – and clearer, more useful summaries of what people think.
• Allowing more residents, from all walks of life, to give their opinions on new developments – so planners get a wider range of ideas and suggestions.
• Helping everyone feel more confident in how planning decisions are made.
• Enabling developers to directly see what residents have to say, so they can act on it if they wish
• Leading to faster moving projects, without unnecessary hold-ups – saving time and money.
• Making sure neighbourhoods match what people need and want more closely.
• Helping people believe more in the planning process and in their local leaders

Partnership and roadmap

Digital Planning Register is being developed and designed in collaboration between Camden Council and Lambeth Council. Looking forward, our goals for the next two years include taking Digital Planning Register through an open Beta phase to:

• Improve the user experience for residents and planners 

• Integrate with BOPs and other digital planning products

• Broaden the range of development applications covered by our service

• Create a public index of searchable records and documents of applications