DPI show and tells

Harlow Council - Digital Planning Improvement Project

In this month’s DPIF Show and Tell, Harlow Council presented their work on creating a Listed Building Curtilage dataset, led by Daniel Rance. The session showcased how historic maps, Land Registry records and planning documents were used to accurately define curtilage boundaries and improve data quality.

Daniel demonstrated the process through a live example, highlighting challenges with historic records and inaccurate location points. The project has delivered benefits beyond DPIF, supporting both planning decisions and the Land Charges Programme, with collaboration across planning, GIS and external partners playing a key role.

East Riding of Yorkshire Council - Digital Planning Improvement Project

In this month’s DPIF Show and Tell, East Riding of Yorkshire Council shared their digital planning journey, led by Gail Heath, Sarah Wright and Jamie Wormald. The team outlined how DPIF funding helped improve planning data quality, build GIS capability within the planning service and strengthen collaboration across teams.

The presentation highlighted the publication of planning datasets, development of a new Planning Constraints Checker and creation of a public Planning Data Hub. The team also shared future plans to expand digital services through PlanX, with a strong focus on embedding skills, improving services and continuing their digital transformation journey.

London Borough of Brent - Digital Planning Improvement Project:

In this month’s DPIF Show and Tell, London Borough of Brent presented their digital planning journey, led by Derin Fadina. The session covered Brent’s progress through the Digital Planning Improvement Fund (DPIF), including completion of the Digital Planning Maturity Assessment (DPMA) and publication of all required planning data sets. Derin highlighted how strong leadership support, cross-team collaboration, and engagement with subject matter experts helped accelerate delivery.

A key focus was Brent’s approach to publishing both spatial and non-spatial planning data sets. Derin explained the technical workflows used, including publishing data directly from authoritative GIS databases and overcoming challenges with endpoint and webpage requirements for non-spatial datasets such as Tree Preservation Orders and conservation area documents. The presentation provided practical insights for other LPAs still working through their own data publishing processes.

The session concluded with reflections on the positive organisational impact of the DPMA, which encouraged open discussions about digital maturity, training, and data governance. Derin also shared Brent’s successful application to the PlanX Adoption Fund, made possible by completing core dataset publication ahead of schedule. Attendees praised the presentation for its detail and transparency, with discussion focusing on lessons learned from the DPMA process and the importance of securing buy-in from staff and senior leaders.

Lake District National Park Authority - Digital Planning Improvement Project:

Chloe Swift shared the authority’s digital planning journey since joining DPIF in April 2025. Through the programme, the team digitised key planning datasets, improved digital skills across the organisation, and established more efficient processes for managing planning data.

A key success was the recruitment of a Digital Assistant through DPIF funding, which helped the authority digitise and quality assure thousands of planning records. Chloe highlighted the collaborative effort between planning, GIS and specialist teams to deliver this work.

Chloe also reflected on the value of the ODP community, learning from other authorities, sharing experiences, and exploring new digital approaches. She spoke positively about hosting the ODP Spring Event in Keswick, which helped strengthen relationships with the ODP team and wider planning community while showcasing the authority’s work and achievements.

Halton Digital Planning Improvement Project:
Adrian Farrell outlined Halton's DPIF journey, focusing on discovering the datasets required including location, data ownership and the technical requirements.  He covered the data sources they had identified for the Land Registry Local Land Charges data transfer and several which were interchangeable with the DPIF project while some were improved including Tree and Listed Buildings. 
Adrian went on to provide details of the results which included a GeoServer based site, Open Digital Planning Data and a Delivery and Allocations Local Plan (DALP), and the future at Halton which includes them feeling in a strong place to provide and improve their final 5 datasets.

London Borough of Lewisham Digital Planning Improvement Project:
Liam Barnes presented Lewisham's account of when they began the DPIF project with some initial assumptions but he shared the very honest reality that by the time they onboarded there had been reduced staff resources, existing projects did not complete as scheduled in early 2025, and the project assistant moved to another post.
Liam went on to share that the DPIF project presented a learning curve for QGIS as he had never used it before but he spoke about the training and the support he received via City Science.
He explained Lewisham's work on the data sets and the CSV vs Geojson and how they used the DPI funding. 

North Norfolk District Council – Digital Planning Improvement Project

Maxine Collis (with Max Selwyn) from North Norfolk explained how their project combined delivery of the required DPIF datasets with wider organisational improvement. They focused on strengthening digital capability, improving their website and document management, and upskilling staff in GIS and Power BI. A major theme was solving the technical challenge of automating data pipelines from their planning system into standardised formats, which they addressed by adopting FME Flow. This enabled more efficient, reusable data processes and supported a broader goal of improving performance monitoring, cross-team working, and readiness for future organisational change.

Dartford Borough Council – Digital Planning Improvement Project

Liz Quogan and Andy Mahon from Dartford described a practical, system-led approach to publishing their datasets. They extracted and transformed data from Uniform into the required schema and used ArcGIS tools to publish it to planningdata.gov. Their work emphasised improving data quality through validation rules, ensuring completeness of geometry and documents, and learning from neighbouring councils to troubleshoot issues. They also used historic aerial imagery and legacy records to resolve discrepancies, and highlighted outcomes such as improved public access to data and reduced need for manual data sharing.

Havant Borough Council – Digital Planning Improvement Project

Louise Weaver from Havant outlined a pragmatic, step-by-step approach where datasets were tackled sequentially, with methods refined as the project progressed. A significant proportion of effort went into data cleansing and consolidation, particularly for TPOs, which involved digitising, validating, and aligning records spread across systems and physical archives. She also described correcting GIS boundaries across datasets and resolving inconsistencies in historic records. The result was a set of accurate, accessible datasets and greater internal confidence in data quality and maintenance processes going forward.

Swale Borough Council – Digital Planning Improvement Project

Carly Stoddart outlined Swale’s DPIF journey as a Cohort 4.1 authority, describing how the team initially struggled to complete the DPMA while balancing day‑to‑day planning work and limited digital capacity. With no dedicated digital planning officer, progress relied on close collaboration between Development Management, GIS, and Business Support. Despite these constraints, Swale moved quickly, publishing five of the nine required datasets and preparing the remaining four for improvement—helped by strong joint working between GIS and heritage colleagues.

Swale also secured funding for PlanX after seeing its potential at a neighbouring authority and explored the Extract pilot to digitise thousands of historic paper planning files stored in the council’s basement. Carly noted that internal decision‑making processes, staff turnover, and some resistance to digital change slowed progress, but support from the wider ODP community proved invaluable. The project has accelerated Swale’s digital maturity and shaped plans for improved data access, SharePoint migration, Power BI dashboards, and more consistent planning processes.

Thanet District Council – Digital Planning Improvement Project

Jess Seward presented Thanet’s transformation journey, explaining that the council began with outdated GIS infrastructure, fragmented datasets, and no GIS officer in post. Their project—nicknamed “Out of the Basement”—focused on replacing fragile legacy servers, rebuilding spatial data capability, and restoring organisational confidence in GIS. When a new GIS officer, Mark, joined the team, he rapidly upskilled through FME training and the use of AI tools, helping to document long‑lost processes and stabilise the system.

Jess emphasised that cultural challenges were as significant as the technical ones, with planning teams stretched by a Uniform‑to‑IDOX migration and struggling to engage with the DPMA and dataset ownership. Despite this, Thanet successfully published core datasets, including conservation areas, listed buildings, and TPOs, and is now contributing to the National Planning Data Platform. The project has reduced technical debt, strengthened internal capability, and laid the groundwork for improved data governance, automation, and long‑term digital improvement.

Southampton City Council – Digital Planning Improvement Project

Helen Owens and Tom Barnett described Southampton’s Cohort 3 experience, beginning with the assumption that their datasets were already in good shape due to earlier digitisation and an established public web map. The DPMA, however, revealed inconsistencies in data standards and gaps in internal engagement, prompting a wider programme of data review, website redesign, and technology auditing. Tom, who had no prior GIS experience, retrained using QGIS and rebuilt several datasets from scratch, significantly improving their accuracy and readiness for publication.

The team also integrated planning data into new 2D and 3D mapping tools, enabling interactive policy layers and linking them to PropTech solutions such as Conveyor. This work supports a more visual and accessible approach to the emerging Local Plan. Challenges included extracting TPO data from Uniform, inconsistent historic records, and delays caused by a corporate website migration. Southampton’s next steps include publishing datasets once new URLs are finalised, applying data standards across all local plan evidence, and expanding digital tools to support transparency and customer‑focused planning services.

Stoke-on-Trent Digital Planning Improvement Project: Andrew Powell outlined Stoke-on-Trent’s DPIF journey, focusing on the complexity of digitising legacy planning data, particularly Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) dating back to 1959. He explained the scale of the task, involving hundreds of TPOs, inconsistent historic records, and inaccurate GIS data, all requiring significant manual review. Despite limited additional capacity, the team standardised and published the data, improving accuracy, accessibility, and service efficiency. He stressed the importance of early multidisciplinary working and peer support across the ODP community. Andrew concluded that the project has accelerated digital maturity and influenced plans for a dedicated digital and data team within Planning.

Stockport Digital Planning Improvement Project: Jaime Scowcroft presented Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council's journey in integrating and improving planning data, detailing the challenges faced with legacy systems, the transition to unified data management using iDocs and FME, and the development of public-facing directories for listed buildings and tree preservation orders, with support and contributions from the web development and heritage teams.

Student Involvement and Apprenticeship Programmes: Jaime Scowcroft described the involvement of students through the Jumpstart programme in scanning and entering tree preservation order data.

Ashford Borough Council Digital Planning Improvement Project: Ben Robinson from Ashford Borough Council presented an overview of their digital planning improvement project, detailing the project's background, team structure, successes in data management, challenges faced during implementation, and future plans, with questions and discussion involving Karen Lucas and Liam Barnes.

Surrey Heath Borough Council Digital Planning Project: Navil Rahman from Surrey Heath Borough Council provided a comprehensive update on their digital planning project, discussing the borough's context, initial challenges with data and staffing, recent progress in data cleansing and team formation, and next steps, with follow-up questions from Phil James and Tom Lowndes.

Community Engagement and Knowledge Sharing: Phil James and Carly Hughes encouraged ongoing engagement through Slack and highlighted the value of show and tell sessions for fostering connections, sharing experiences, and supporting professional development across councils