Digital Site Notice

How it works for residents

Simplifying planning for residents

Our platform makes it easy for residents 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

How it works for Local Planning Authorities

Streamlining feedback for planners

The Digital Site Notice simplifies the process for planners to incorporate public feedback into their assessments by synchronising with your council's back office system. 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 Site Notice 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 site notice, 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.

Why this tool is important

Lack of trust in planning: The complexity of the planning process often leaves residents feeling powerless and uncertain about how their input can influence neighbourhood development. This can erode trust in the system.

Low awareness of consultations: Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) often use physical site notices to advertise planning applications, but these can be easily overlooked and offer limited details, hindering public engagement.

Lack of representation: The current approach to consultations and sharing information fails to engage a broad spectrum of the community, often resulting in feedback that lacks diversity.

No feedback loop: 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 is outside their scope. This situation leads to a perception among the community that their contributions are undervalued.

Aiming for better things

Making planning better for everyone

• Easy for residents: Helping people quickly understand and get involved in shaping their neighbourhood.
• Less work for planners: Cutting down on the time planners spend fixing errors and sorting through feedback.
• Better feedback: Giving planners more balanced feedback – incorporating positive and negative comments – and clearer, more useful summaries of what people think.
• Diverse opinions: 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.
• Trust grows: Helping everyone feel more confident in how planning decisions are made.
• Feedback gets to developers: Enabling developers to directly see what residents have to say, so they can act on it if they wish
• Fewer delays: Leading to faster moving projects, without unnecessary hold-ups – saving time and money.
• Better places to live: Making sure neighbourhoods match what people need and want more closely.
• More trust in planning: Helping people believe more in the planning process and in their local leaders.

Partnership and roadmap

The direction and delivery of the Digital Site Notice engagement tool is led by a partnership between Camden and Lambeth councils, supported by a TPXimpact delivery team. 

Looking forward, our goals for the next two years include taking Digital Site Notice 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 

Get in touch

For more information and/or to get involved, please email ODP@levellingup.gov.uk.