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Scottish Awards for Quality in Planning 2003

Application form

This application form can either be completed by hand or electronically (pdf version) on the Planning homepage at www.scotland.gov.uk/planning . Please complete all four questions. The deadline is 12 September 2003. An acknowledgement letter will be sent to the person who has completed this form.

Please provide a name and contact details of the organisation responsible for this work. If partners were involved, identify the lead organisation, and then list the other partners/bodies who had a key role.

Name of key partners (if appropriate)

Please complete the form by providing a brief summary (in no more than the space provided) of the piece of work you have entered. You must also conclude, with a key reason, as to why you think this work merits an Award.

Please tick the key criteria which relate to this entry:

You must describe in your written submission (below) how the criteria which you have ticked relates to your project.

Description of project

This application is submitted by CAPS Solutions in partnership with Stirling Council and the City of Edinburgh Council.

CAPS Solutions is a company which provides software and services to UK Local Authorities. The main software package, UNI-form, assists authorities with the administrative tasks around the processing of planning applications and around other planning and property related functions. The Edinburgh office of CAPS Solutions is responsible for the development of 'web enabled' modules so that access to data held in the UNl-form system can be extended to a wider audience including the general public, Councillors, developers and basically anyone with access to the Internet and an interest in planning.

This project covers the development of a commercial product 'PublicAccess for Planning' from concept stage through to implementation in 2 Scottish authorities, Stirling Council and City of Edinburgh Council and consequently the application is made by the partnership of these 3 organisations.

The project can be seen in 2 parts:

• The design and development of the product by CAPS Solutions
• The implementation of the system on-site at each of the Councils

The design and development phase required close collaboration between CAPS Solutions and its local authority partners to bring together the professional knowledge of planners and software developers, specifically web developers. It was important to understand the various categories of people who would use the service and the details of the information they would seek. This required strong input from planning professionals.

The implementation phase required a number of linked activities to be addressed by the partners. This involved a number of key tasks including:

• The preparation of a suitably secure ICT infrastructure within the authority
• A level of customisation of the PublicAccess product to suit the requirements of each individual authority

Activation of PublicAccess took place in February 2003 for Stirling Council and in August 2003 for City of Edinburgh Council. The Edinburgh implementation was carried out by BT Syntegra, the Council's CT partner, in association with CAPS Solutions and l-document systems to add a further dimension by linking the planning records held within UNl-form to a store of associated documents (application forms, submitted drawings etc).

CAPS Solutions and the Councils are now monitoring the usage of the PublicAccess to assess how well initial design aims have been achieved and to learn any lessons that will inform the development of related future products. The project has already received acclaim from community organisations for the greater accessibility and transparency it brings to the development control process.

Timescale (over which the project has developed)

The idea of PublicAccess was conceived in 2001 following the release of the most recent version of UNI-form, called UNl-form Spatial. It was considered that such a product would be well received by CAPS' customers given the well publicised 2005 deadline for authorities to offer electronic services.

Discussions were held with planners from authorities which expressed interest in being early adopters. Development work began later in 2001 and proceeded with the development team keeping in regular touch with professional planners. The product was formally released in October 2002.

Stirling Council was the first Scottish customer to place an order (in August 2002) and an implementation project was put in place. A typical implementation may take 4 months but the Stirling 'go live' was delayed by the late realisation that the Loch Lomond National Park's overlap with the Stirling Council boundary required a

software 'fix' to be put in place delaying the 'go live' till February 2003.

City of Edinburgh's PublicAccess went live in August 2003 following an implementation project which involved a wider partnership of BT Syntegra, CAPS Solutions and l-document systems to further customise the PublicAccess tool to meet local requirements within a more comprehensive Planning Portal context.

Context (the problem which had to be addressed)

For some years Government has recognised the importance of information held within local authorities being more readily accessible to the public. The Internet is seen as an ideal channel for this information provision and this whole strategy is commonly referred to as e-Government, i.e. the interaction between government organisations and citizens by electronic means. Within this strategy, e-Planning (the availability of planning information electronically) has had considerable attention for several reasons:

• the significant impact of planning decisions on citizens
• the time consuming process faced by citizens interacting with planning departments by traditional methods
• the perceived complexity of the planning process and difficulty communities face trying to engage with it
• the fact that e-Planning is considered a valuable and highly visible 'quick win' for authorities anxious to improve service delivery

In the Scottish context, the Development Division of the Scottish Executive has been actively working with authorities to define an e-Planning compact which sets out a wide-ranging checklist of functions that individual Councils should aim to achieve. These include:

• Online provision of the Planning Register
• Online provision of the weekly list
• Online submission of comments
• Online presentation of constraints such as conservation areas

Scottish Executive funding has been made available to authorities via MGF which can assist Councils with the implementation of their e-Planning portals. Along with this funding the Executive encourages Councils to seek cost-effective solutions by, for example, acting in consortium to procure a solution from a supplier whose development cost is spread over a number of customers.

The e-Planning portal projects fit closely with another project aimed to help authorities sort and clean their property gazetteers. This project is also funded by MGF and should result in each Council having a single master address gazeffeer. This is important in the planning process to ensure that there is no uncertainty about the identity of a property which is the subject of a planning application.

Action taken

CAPS Solutions seemed to be well placed to develop an e-Planning solution to offer to its customers. 19 Scottish authorities use the back-office Planning module. This meant the development cost can be spread across a significant number of authorities and economies of scale meant the system could be supported and enhanced in the future.

To meet the goal of affordability, PublicAccess was conceived as a standard product with a well-defined implementation package. It was recognised that there should be a certain amount of customisation possible but this should be limited in order to maintain supportability and also deliver a consistency that reflects the national planning system. The customisation would allow each Council to modify the colour scheme to match corporate web styling and also to select which fields of information should be displayed or hidden. Consultation took place between CAPS staff and Planners within the early adopting authorities to ensure that the specification would meet legislative requirements and the needs of the wider planning community.

In Scotland, Stirling and Edinburgh decided to be early adopters. Initial preparation required a number of linked activities to be addressed by the partners:

• To prepare the ICT infrastructure which must be secure enough to allow access by the public into the 'live' planning database
• To ensure that the data is accurate to a sufficiently high level since it is now exposed to the outside world
• To test with service users the functionality of the PubliCAccess tool relative to their own information needs

Stirling went 'live' with PublicAccess in February of this year, the first Council in the UK to implement this system and host it in-house. A press launch was held on February 14 to announce it to a varied and enthusiastic audience. The City of Edinburgh's implementation was launched in August by the Depute Minister for Communities and to a reception of service users. The City of Edinburgh use of PublicAccess adds value by having a linkage from planning records to a store of associated documents. The implementation of PublicAccess in Edinburgh is the first phase of a more comprehensive project for Planning and Building Control on-line services being developed with BT Syntegra, the Council's ICT partner.

Results achieved

1) Greater access to planning applications and other related property information. Most Planning Authorities hold a wealth of data in back-office systems but it has not been possible for citizens to access this information without making a formal request and often having to wait for a response. Responding to such requests is time consuming and costly for the authority. This solution has provided all parties with self-service access to this information at all times.

2) Improved awareness of planning proposals. Planning Authorities need to make sure that their communities are well informed about proposals for development within their local area. PublicAccess publishes details about all new applications on the web in real time. It also has the facility to allow plan drawings to be displayed (as used in Edinburgh) providing unprecedented levels of information to the public.

3) Interactive use. Comments and objections to live applications can now be submitted online, offering a convenient way to engage with planners about specific proposals.

4) Improved Planning Application processes. Providing 21st century services means authorities rethinking the way in they work and harnessing the potential of technology. PublicAccess has been developed to maximise the benefit of existing systems and to link with corporate initiatives such as Electronic Records and Document Management Systems.

5) E-Service. PublicAccess has allowed Stirling and Edinburgh to fulfil a large part of their e-planning obligations, as set out in the Scottish Executive's e-Planning Compact.

6) 24/7 accessibility. With PublicAccess, Stirling and Edinburgh have extended the reach of the consultation process to groups that would otherwise be disadvantaged. These include people whose work, disablement or travel costs discourage them from visiting Council offices.

The results can be seen live at www.edinburgh.gov.uklplanning and www.stirling.gov.uk

Conclusion - Why does this piece of work merit an Award?

1) Partnership - the success of PublicAccess has resulted from partnership working between a supplier of software, CAPS Solutions and its customers, Stirling Council and City of Edinburgh CouncilIBT Syntegra 2) Professional knowledge - planning and software professionals came together to design a product that would be easy to use by a range of people interested in planning information. This includes the general public as well as planning professionals, developers, agents and Councillors. Professional knowledge was required to create a product useable by the casual user whilst still useful to the professional user.

3) Efficiency - the implementation of PublicAccess has no doubt increased the access to planning information held by the Councils but since the whole process is handled automatically, no additional load is placed on planning staff, allowing a much greater number of enquiries per staff member to be satisfied.

4) Community interest - By their implementation of PublicAccess, Stirling and Edinburgh have made planning information much more readily available to the community at large including groups for whom time pressure or disability precludes visits to the Council offices.

5) Innovation - PublicAccess is an innovative product in its design to suit the needs of a wide range of interested parties. Specific features include the mapping which allows enquiries to be made when neither the address nor the case number are known, the advanced search facility which allows application searches to be limited by dates or by ward etc. and also the linkage to the gazetteer of definitive property addresses.

6) Customer satisfaction - users of the system have been involved in testing the product and have indicated their enthusiasm for many of the reasons mentioned above but mainly for making the planning process more transparent and accessible.

Date

11 September 2003

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