As a regular user of the planning portal I was delighted to receive notification this week that Cheshire East Council will be upgrading their online planning application system.
The upgrade is designed to make the system quicker and easier to use, as well as more reliable and functional for both customers and staff.
It is the first time the system will integrate planning applications for Cheshire East as a whole and customers will also be able to access on-going applications.
As a result of the upgrade, the current system will be unavailable until 10th March and no new applications will be added to the system during this time.
New planning applications can still be sent to Cheshire East Council and will continue to be processed, they will then be added to the new online system once it is up and running.
Existing applications can be viewed for the first week but for the final days of implementation, access to this will be unavailable.
Cheshire East Councillor Jamie Macrae, Cabinet member with responsibility for prosperity, said: "We are now at the final stage of what has been an important transformation period for our online planning application system. Providing excellent customer service is very important to this authority. This is a streamlining exercise, allowing us to make viewing applications a simple and straightforward experience for staff and customers.
"I would like to thank those who use the system, in advance, for their patience during this time and I am sure the new, far more efficient, system will be welcomed by many."
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
For example, Lichfield District Council has a far more professional planning portal. It has features such as email alerts where you can sign up to receive an email every time there is a new planning application within a certain distance of your postcode. They also have RSS feeds which would help get the information out there. With an RSS feed available we could display that information within the property section of this web site or you could keep up to date with new planning applications using an RSS reader such as Google Reader.
Fingers crossed that the upgrade means new features such as the above rather than just less system errors when using it!