The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has announced a round of funding for digital projects in the planning process.
It said it is allocating £5.3 million from the first round Planning Software Improvement Fund between 19 local authority led projects within three tracks.
The fund, launched last November, is aimed at supporting councils in working together to develop services as part of the Open Digital Planning (ODP) project and working with their existing suppliers, and comes in response to DLUHC’s ambition to see a new, more modular software landscape.
Birmingham, Canterbury, Epsom and Ewell, and Barnet Councils have won backing for work within the first track, which involves joining the ODP project to design the next generation of planning services for local government. They will join the existing teams working on the development of the open source PlanX and Back Office Planning System (BoPS) software.
Track two involves adopting one of the two software products. Great Yarmouth Borough Council has won support to develop an integration between BoPS and the Planning Portal, while Gateshead, Kingston upon Thames, Tewkesbury, West Berkshire and St Albans will integrated PlanX with their existing back office software.
Under track three, nine councils have worn support to work with one or more of their existing suppliers to improve interoperability between services. The councils to receive funding on this track are Dorset, Dover, Liverpool, Redbridge, Waltham Forest, North Lincolnshire, Salford and Wirral.
