National rollout begins
We're pleased to announce the national rollout of our new online
appeals service following its successful pilot phase. This
represents a significant milestone in our digital transformation
programme.
The service has been thoroughly tested with five London boroughs
(Barnet, Greenwich, Havering, Richmond upon Thames, and Bromley)
who have been handling both householder appeals (fast-track
cases) and section 78 (full planning) appeals through the
system.
Phased rollout approach
We're using a phased approach to roll out the service:
- Cohort 1: Two local planning authorities have recently joined
the pilot – Gloucestershire County Council and Gosport Borough
Council.
- Cohort 2: We will increase the number of authorities joining
towards the end of July.
- National rollout: All authorities in England will join the
service by December 2025. We will be sharing more details after
the summer.
Benefits for local planning authorities
The new service offers several important improvements:
- streamlined submission and management of appeals, making the
process more efficient
- a user-friendly LPA dashboard for reviewing and monitoring
cases, following GOV.UK design principles
- improved communication between all parties, reducing
paper-based processes
- continuous improvement of the system based on user
feedback
Show and tell for LPAs
Last week, we ran a ‘show and tell' attended by around 800 people
from over 230 local planning authorities to showcase the new
service and outline the changes. Recording of the session is
below:
Watch: Appeal a
planning decision service Show and tell
We received a wealth of excellent questions during the session
and, while we managed to answer some of them live, we weren't
able to address all of them in the time available. We're
currently working through these questions and will aim to provide
comprehensive responses as soon as possible.
Thank you
We want to thank our pilot local planning authorities for their
valuable feedback and collaboration, which has been crucial in
refining the service. We're also grateful to our project team,
casework teams and inspectors for their hard work in developing
this system.
Further information
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