About ODP
ODP is a community of planners, digital innovators and technical experts from local planning departments across England. We work together to develop better planning software, improve planning data, and explore new ways of working in planning departments to deliver more value to members of the public.
Why it exists
Planning is evolving from a system largely based on documents to a system based on the practical use of data. This has already happened in other parts of society, and the technology and organisations that deliver planning services can benefit from digital improvements. By working together we can make our 2033 vision for local planning services a reality.
How it works
We work in a collaborative, transparent and iterative way. By sharing our skills, challenges and solutions within the ODP community it allows us to work more effectively across local government, central government and the sector.
The ODP community
If you’re reading this, then you’re already a part of the ODP community!
You have access to peers from 100+ different Local planning authority teams who are on the same journey that you are – navigating digital planning and data opportunities, improving services, and developing better technology with each other and with the private sector.
You can:
- interact with your colleagues in other Local Authorities via the ODP Slack workspace, an instant messaging platform
- find self-service guidance via our ODP Hub, which is created using Local Gov Drupal
- take part in different community activities and events ranging from regional meet ups and virtual Show and Tells, lunch and learn sessions and dedicated special interest groups to tackle shared problems together
If you’re new here, you can read about how to do these things, and more, in our step-by-step guide to onboarding.
How ODP is structured
Within ODP, LPAs are clustered into different areas. Read about the different areas of ODP and what they’re responsible for:
How we work in ODP
We are collaborative by default and encourage everyone to ask each other for help, and share knowledge and expertise openly. The ‘open’ in ‘Open Digital Planning’ refers to an approach to sector-wide transformation based around three principles.
- Open networking and Collaboration
- Open Innovation
- Open architectures: open data, standards and technology
Read more about what these principles mean in practice in a blog post written by Matt Wood-Hill - Head of Digital Planning Software.
Who’s involved?
We have over 100 councils involved in the digital planning fund in some form. That’s around a third of English councils. ODP is funded by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG ) through the Digital Planning programme. We work with software development partners Open Systems Lab and Unboxed, numerous universities, public sector organisations and private sector businesses who partner with councils on the PropTech fund.
See the LPAs in Open Digital Planning
Our ambition to formalise ODP
Our ambition is to be the primary local government network for built environment services in England.
We would like to reduce our dependence on grant funding over time, and put co-operative local government leadership and governance at the core of a new entity that is independent from central government and from any single local authority.
We aim to oversee best-in-class digital planning products and services, to facilitate a collective voice in conversations with the private sector, and to continue to support the development of digital and data capabilities in local government planning teams.