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St Helens Council shortlisted for
e-Planning solution awards
St Helens Council is committed to e-Consultation – utilising e-mail
and the Internet to communicate with all of the Council’s
constituents and partners and this includes using online facilities
in planning decisions.
Planning applications are public information and the Planning
Department at St Helens was keen to provide more information to more
people. They are doing this via the Council’s website, and now that
the planning applications are available online, information can be
viewed immediately and shared with no delay. This approach is also
very environmentally friendly, saving money in paper and postage,
and helps everyone to making savings in petrol costs, both within
the Council and in the wider community.
Citizens and statutory consultees can access information and look up
planning applications submitted by their neighbours, for example. A
key part of this is the Adobe Measuring Tool, provided by ROCC,
which allows people to see distances and measurements, even though
these are not generally printed on the plans.
St Helens Council was selected to participate in the trial of the
e-Hub for the Planning Portal, and as such is becoming an example of
best practise in e-Consultation. The Council is also being cited as
a case study for the Royal Town Planning Institute. The St Helens
e-Planning solution has already been shortlisted for some awards,
and as other Local Authorities begin to implement similar solutions,
St Helens Council is viewed as an excellent example for others to
follow.
Solution
Towards the end of 2008, St Helens Council installed the Adobe
Measuring Tool from ROCC. This means that anyone with the free Adobe
Reader software can view the plans online, without needing to go
into the Planning Office.
Plans are always drawn to scale, but not all of measurements are
shown on the plans. The Measuring Tool lets people measure the
distances that are not marked.
In addition, there are Measuring and Mark-up facilities for everyone
to use. An online user can accurately estimate distances and areas
and print a copy of a plan or save it to their own computer. The
system allows several parties to collaborate on the plan online.
Members of the public can use this to comment on a plan that is
under consideration and planning officers can use it for discussions
during the decision making process.
ROCC also provides software that automates the process of
standardising plans to the PDF format, making it easy to load the
information into the system.
This is all up and running at St Helens and the Council has provided
instructions to make sure that everyone can use the system
successfully by themselves.
Tracey Carter, Technical Support Team Leader for the Development and
Control Department, explains:
“Now, every time we scan a plan in, we add the Measuring Tool. This
means that members of the public can see how big a development is
going to be and they can measure distances. As members of the public
tend not to see plans very often, it’s difficult for them to
estimate distances, so it’s good that they can actually see the
distance shown by the measuring tool. For example, they can see how
far a new building is going to be from their own boundary.”
“Implementing the Measuring Tool has been very easy,” Tracey adds.
“And we are finding lots of little uses for the Measuring Tool. The
Council can now carry out its dialogues with its agents online, so
it’s proved to be extremely useful. It’s also instant. You can open
up a plan and measure distances straight away rather than waiting.
ROCC are very good as a company.” She comments, “They are very
helpful and if there was anything they didn’t know, they went away
and found out. Dealing with them was very straightforward and there
were no hidden costs.”
Costs and Benefits
Mark Dickens is the Development Services Manager for the Planning
Department. He sums up the benefits of the new system:
“The Measuring Tool has justified itself because it has made such an
improvement to the service we provide. It has made the service
better with broader environmental benefits. It will save time and
money for the members of the public who use the facility. The
e-Planning system is particularly useful for people from outlying
villages, who would otherwise need to make a car journey or a bus
journey into town to see the planning applications. At St Helens, we
were primarily concerned with improving the customer experience and
offering a first class service to the people in our Borough. But we
are convinced that the savings we will make will pay for the cost of
the service and the installation of the system.”
Learn More:
Visit
the St Helens Council Website
