A 'brave new world' for digital planning

The challenge

The BOPS product is part of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) Open Digital Planning (ODP) programme.

The purpose of ODP is to transform the planning system in England and Wales from an approach reliant on documents and physical maps to a data driven, digital system built around open standards that enables many different services to use the same data interoperably.

Within the scope of BOPS, this means making planning data open and accessible to support a modular system through integrations with both current and new digital planning systems.

This will help planning officers in councils spend less time searching for information, giving them more time to use their expertise on higher value work. During recent testing, the London Borough of Southwark found that using BOPS resulted in a 30 per cent time saving in assessing planning applications.

Background

MHCLG funded a number of councils through the Local Digital Fund to partner with Unboxed to design and build a more innovative back office product. This product has become part of the wider ODP programme to transform the UK planning ecosystem as a whole, from how people apply for applications to how they are assessed and granted.

Our approach

We’ve designed BOPS in collaboration with planning officers, for planning officers. So far we’ve delivered:

• a discovery phase to engage with planning officers in multiple local authorities and stakeholders across the sector, understanding user needs and the broader planning landscape and presenting a compelling vision
• an alpha phase to prototype and test potential solutions to improve efficiency, effectiveness and transparency within the planning application process
• a beta phase and ongoing development of a working system, integrated with the broader planning ecosystem and a shared vision for Open Digital Planning

In the earlier phases, we focused on a subset of application types. During the beta phase, we’ve been working on accepting the many different types of planning applications that can be found within the complex planning ecosystem.

We've followed the GDS Service Standard throughout this process.

What we learnt

Relationships and great communication are essential in a complex project of this nature that involves multiple work streams across different organisations.

We’ve been working collaboratively with a large number of product owners, subject matter experts, stakeholders and delivery partners. We’ve also been managing the political, legal and commercial challenges in planning from subject matter experts and using this as an opportunity to re-imagine and co-design solutions that work.

Next steps

After designing and launching a beta version of the case management system to validate, assess and review applications (currently being used by Buckinghamshire, Lambeth and Southwark Councils), we will be working with more councils to make the product adaptable on a larger scale.

We have illustrated the value of the open data provided by BOPS by using its API to build a map showing planning applications near a given postcode. We’re also looking at how BOPS could support services related to planning, such as enforcement and building control.