Council planning site to be improved

A guide will soon be uploaded to Powys County Council’s (PCC) website to help people use their new planning portal, councillors have been told.

At a PCC Planning Committee meeting on Thursday, September 3, councillors were given an update on work being done to try and make the new planning portal more user friendly.

This came during discussion of the delegated decision list.

At each meeting councillors receive the delegated decisions list which have been made by planning officers during the weeks between meetings.

Cllr Jonathan Wilkinson (Conservative – Meifod and Llangyniew) said: “Once again the delegate list is confused, it’s difficult to interpret and in no sort of order.

“When can we hope for that to be improved to make it easier for us to use?

“It’s just not user friendly in any way.”

Development team manager Gemma James asked Cllr Wilkinson which list he was referring to?

Cllr Wilkinson confirmed that he had printed a copy of the first version of the list – which had not been split up by council ward.

The original list showed delegated decision taken between July 28 to August 24.

A second version of the list which included decisions up to August 27 had the wards noted in alphabetical order – but only below the decisions for 30 planning applications.

Mrs James said: “We acknowledge that for older applications the wards aren’t pulling through, our IT department is trying to resolve that.

“As you can see if you scroll down the wards are pulling through for more modern (planning applications) ones.

“For older applications the migration has not worked correctly, we are working on that, and they may have to be inputted manually to try and resolve this.”

She explained that further decision lists would be split into “parishes” which in Wales means town and community council areas.

“That’s how it will work moving forward once we get over these issues,” said Mrs James.

Committee chairman Cllr Gareth D Jones (Powys Independents – Llanfair Caereinion and Llanerfyl) said: “I’m sure a number of you have observed that the planning portal is not as easy to operate as it previously was.

“I’ve had a number of community councils and residents contact me, and that’s being worked on as well, isn’t it?”

Mrs James said: “We’re working on a user guide and searching by month will be available.

“A user guide up will walk people through how to use those steps.

“That will be made available of the website shortly.”

She was thanked by Cllr Jones for the update.

In April the council started using software by Arcus for their online “built environment public register.”

Planning applications received before April 20, continued to be processed using the previous Idox system.

The ability to be able to view older planning applications on the Idox system disappeared  in July with a message appearing on the web page to say, “service unavailable.”

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporting Service