Planning Portal 12-month improvement journey

In 2022, we built the foundations of our new application service, allowing us to expand, add new features and improve functionality. A year on from the launch of the in-house developed Planning Portal, we have continually improved the system to benefit all our users. Of course, we won’t stop here – there are many more enhancements in the pipeline, so look out for updates about what is ahead.

See the changes we've made over the last 12 months…

February 2022 - Planning Portal launch
Following many months of effort and research by our teams, TerraQuest launch the improved Planning Portal application service and guidance website.

May 2022 - Unveiling of the 12 remaining Prior Approval online application types and improvements to the supporting documents feature
We enabled the 12 remaining Prior Approval application types. This covered all the Prior Approval requirements that were introduced via amendments to permitted development legislation over the last couple of years and allows users to create and submit these applications to any Local Authority in England. For supporting documents, new document descriptions, multiple list views and an updated completion page were introduced.

June 2022 - Strengthening of the system infrastructure
Improvements were made to the back-end system helping to make the platform more robust and resilient.
For Local Authorities: Introduction of our latest data standard, Schema v3.0, allowing Local Planning Authorities to automatically download the recently launched Prior Approval forms.

August 2022 - Updates to the system to remove time-sensitive legislation
The system was updated to remove time-specific ‘Protected development’, introduced by the government during the pandemic, other Prior Approval forms were also updated.

November 2022 - Improvements to the user interface and further supporting document updates
A package of enhancements to the registration and log in journey, starting an application, question fields, regulation 3 payments and retraction. Also more detailed changes such as:

• User interface, and device/browser compliance: Alignment issues with our date picker in certain browsers, display improvements to fee calculator and projects on mobile devices, and eliminating screen flickering 
• Easier selection of document types: the selection of document types is now handled in a window (rather than a drop-down list)
• Selection of multiple document types: users can select multiple document types from the list as part of the upload process, making it easier to ‘tag’ all relevant types to each file.

For Local Authorities: Local Authorities can now set their own file size limits up to 30Mb through the LPA admin tool.

February 2023 - New system features
New features include more options when copying applications, choosing not to copy supporting documents, changing application type and better contextual information.
Other changes in this release include:

• Use Classes: updates to all but one of our questions that refer to Use Classes to ensure they align with legislation.
• Greater London Authority changes: working with the Greater London Authority to update several of the specific question sets that capture additional information in application submissions for the capital.
• Additional information from Local Authorities: The ability for Local authorities to add information to the notice box container to highlight messages to users

For Local Authorities: Following multiple requests, Local Authorities can now add a message to users alongside their contact details, a request we had from many authorities.

With the rapid pace of improvements to the service over the last year, we are excited about further enhancements planned for the coming months, and we are sure these changes will be welcomed by all our users - as TerraQuest continue to develop and deliver a complete digital planning process.