Telford and Wrekin Council has signed up to contribute to the development of a new back office system for planning and building controls.
It has come to an arrangement with DEF Software to provide its input on the design of a new web based application, and to become the first council to use it with a projected deployment date of late 2023.
Graeme Cooke, DEF’s commercial director, said the move comes from the council looking to replace a legacy system and getting into discussions with the company while it was planning to develop a new generation of its existing system, and both finding that they had identified similar priorities for planning and building controls.
He said the arrangement, which follows a formal procurement process in which the company won the contract, involves Telford and Wrekin obtaining a product to meet its own specification at an off-the-shelf price.
The system will be built on Microsoft Azure and become available to other councils after the Telford and Wrekin’s deployment.
Among the features identified in advance are that tasks and work lists will be dynamically organised and available to view on a dashboard, which will also be designed to role-relevant based on each user’s job requirements. This will enable them to see how many applications they have live, providing a real time snapshot of their entire workload.
Improve functionality
A spokesperson for Telford and Wrekin said: “We are looking forward to creating the next generation planning and building control system which will improve the functionality of the service, benefiting both officers and the public and providing a better user experience.
“We recognised that DEF Software share the same desire and commitment to make a real positive change in the market place. It is also coming at a time when the planning landscape is changing and we will be in the right position to bring these all on board.”
DEF Software is also planning to rewrite other modules, including those for local land charges, tree preservation orders, listed building and road adoption.
Image: Telford and Wrekin Council offices by Richard Law
