The On-Line Planning System

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Background	The end of 2010
January 2011	February 2011
March 2011	April 2011
May 2011	June 2011
July 2011	August 2011
September 2011	October 2011
November 2011	December 2011
January 2012	February 2012

Background

Before the autumn of 2010, the public could visit Planning Reception to view planning application documents, or view them on-line through a system known as IDOX.  This arrangement had some problems because occasionally a case officer would borrow a planning file and the public had to wait while it was retrieved, but on the whole, the paper files were more up-to-date than the on-line ones because insufficient resources were available to scan documents, and so the task of updating the on-line records was often in arrears.

Preliminary announcements were made regarding the transfer of the planning function and staff from Trimbridge House to Lewis House, which included the news that there would no longer be a Planning Reception.  As a result of this, at the 7th July 2010 Development Control Meeting the Bath Preservation Trust asked the question that many wanted answered, of whether the rumour of the loss of Planning Reception was true.  The Committee Chairman responded saying "We shall ensure there is a proper reception" and we reported that verbatim on this website immediately after that meeting.

Yet when the draft Minutes were published, that statement did not appear.  Item 17 said that "The Chairman stated that Members would make their best endeavours that a public consultation area be provided".  No doubt there were some at the meeting who wished that is what the Chairman had said, but in fact the DCC Chairman was briefer and more positive, saying "We shall ensure there is a proper reception." (NB.  We noted down the words spoken exactly, and still have our notes).  The Chairman did not attempt to correct this error in the Minutes when the "true record" motion was put to the vote, even though we had pointed out the error on this website as soon as the draft minutes were available.  The Minutes of the 7th July 2010 meeting were accepted by the Committee as a true record.  They are not a true record, so every member of the Committee (except those who did not attend the 7th July 2010 meeting) were somewhat economical with the truth when they voted for the "true record" motion.

Subsequently, the council unilaterally declared that from 13 September 2010 all access to planning documentation would be via the on-line services and printed copies would no longer be available for public inspection.  For those without a home computer, some terminals and staff to assist in their use would be available in the Guildhall.  The handicap of trying to appreciate a metre-wide drawing on a screen that can only display a ninth of the drawing at full scale has never been resolved;  nor has a method been provided for comparing two drawings side by side.

We think that this unilateral decision is of dubious legality.  The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 made it obligatory for Local Planning Authorities to prepare a Statement of Community Involvement, and after screening for necessary changes by the Planning Inspectorate, such a statement was formally adopted as B&NES policy.  In the Preface, above the signature of Cllr Gerrish, we read: This document sets new standards for Bath & North East Somerset Council - we now have an obligation to meet these.  So when, further down the document it says (in paragraph 4.16)  Planning applications are available to view on the Council’s website 2-3 days after validation.  Hard copies can be viewed on request from the Planning reception  this is part of that obligation.  The public has an expectation that there will be a Planning Reception where hard copies can be viewed "on request" which means that such documents must be readily available for all to see.  (Well done to the DCC Chairman, who on 7th July 2010 attempted to honour that obligation).  An attempt has been made to remove this obligation be suggesting that it is a minor amendment, but as we show below, for the people affected it is by no stretch of the imagination something that can honestly be called minor.  So to introduce that change the Statement of Community Involvement should be achieved by preparing a new draft for public consultation, with any public comments on it submitted to the Planning Inspectorate along with the draft for a ruling on whether it is reasonable.  In the (probably unlikely) event that is is considered reasonable, then the revision needs to be formally adopted by the council.  None of that has happened.  Why not, given that the Statement of Community Involvement publicly stated that its adopted standards are obligatory?  How long have the arbitrary decisions of council officers been allowed to undermine the decisions of the full council, made in conformance with extant legislation?

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Diary of Events:  Quarter 4 of 2010

Watchdog monitored the services provided to see how effective they were.

On the positive side, the previous time delay between submitting a planning application and the availability of the documents on-line has improved and on the whole the public has the opportunity to study them in time to comment, but some of the supporting documentation never appears.  In particular, when the DCC delegates to officers to permit subject to the agreement of a satisfactory S106 agreement, in many recent cases that agreement never appears when the permission is granted though in the past such documents routinely appeared.  The agreement for the Western Riverside went on-line promptly in December, but the equivalent documents for the flats in Piccadilly Place, the car showrooms at Windsor Bridge and the flats at the former Rockery Tea Gardens (there may be others, we haven't attempted to prepare an exhaustive list) are months overdue.

On the negative side, there have been a number of usability problems.  The loudest complaints we received were about the size of documents.  In the first few days, some documents were scanned at such a poor resolution that text on the page was totally illegible.  Then the opposite problem arose, with documents scanned at such high resolutions that they became too large to download.  Examples abound of 30 Megabyte files and 50 Megabyte files, and there are even examples of 100 Megabyte files.  Not all areas are served by broadband and where rural districts are limited to dial-up connections they have to sit and wait for nearly three hours for a 50 Megabyte file.  Even worse, until it actually arrives, they have no means of knowing how big the file is or how long they would have to wait.  Some dial-up agreements limit the continuous connection time to 2 hours, so the desired file could never be retrieved.  The worst example so far is the application for the Sainsburys extension, where to download all the files through a dial-up link would take a minimum of 41 hours.  Even those who have broadband may have to watch for file sizes, because supply agreements may involve "reasonable use" clauses so that downloading excessive amounts either brings additional charges or a freeze on use for the remainder of a preset period of time.  Mobile broadband normally charges by volume and at typical rates collecting all the Sainsburys documents would cost around £5 by that method.  When lodging a planning application the council's advice on submitting planning documents electronically restricts any document to 10 Megabytes, so anything bigger than this must be a conscious decision by a council employee.  Whether huge file sizes arise from carelessness, ignorance, or inability or even an unwillingness to deal  a problem that adversely affects the public's ability to view and comment on planning applications is unclear.   What is clear though is that it is unacceptable.

The performance of the on-line system has been unsatisfactory.  At the end of our two-month monitoring period we reported:

Although we received no reports of the on-line services failing over the Christmas and New Year break, once the demands on the system increased when staff returned to work and the public once again took an interest in planning matters, the problems reared their heads again.  On the next Friday morning (7th January) it once again proved to be impossible to access planning documents, though full services were restored later in the day.  Similarly, for the whole of the following Sunday afternoon, all attempts at viewing associated documents were met with a request for a Username and Password rather than the screen showing the list of documents that should have appeared.

After eight weeks of monitoring, we have come to the conclusion that the change of policy to have planning applications only available on-line, is not fit for purpose as currently implemented.  In particular, too many decisions are being made when relevant documents have not been on-line long enough for the public to read and comment on them:  in one instance (10/04470/LBA) we were informed of an additional document the day before the decision was made, and the information in that document would have changed our objection to a support comment so the Delegated Report misrepresented our final position.  Such selective availability of information could perhaps lead to allegations of maladministration.  We will continue to monitor the service, and demand significant improvements as a matter of urgency.

Yet worse was to come.

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Diary of Events:  January 2011

During the week beginning 17th January 2011, alongside the electronic button that allowed comments to be submitted appeared a choice of two options: "I am a local resident", and "I live outside the area". The local resident is the default unless the other is chosen

The terms "local" and "the area" are open to interpretation.  For a planning application in (say) Snow Hill, is Larkhall considered local; is Bath considered local or is anywhere in the B&NES area considered local?  Conversely, if you live just over the border in Wiltshire are you allowed to call yourself local to a development just yards away but over the border in B&NES?

Choosing the "local" option leads to an address selection screen covering all of B&NES, but of course it would, because the same system would apply to (say) Keynsham and Chew Valley applications, and therefore there are still no clues about where "local" ends and "outside" begins.  Choosing the "outside" option leads straight to the comment screen that existed before.

Watchdog uses a Post Office Box address so that receiving mail does not rely on somebody being at home in any particular domestic address.  But PO Boxes have no defined street, so if we consider ourselves local to a planning application site, we cannot say so using an address list.   There is not a "No fixed Abode" address that we can use.

Various Watchdog members tested their own addresses and found that for a given address, a number of identities are offered.  But on Friday (21 Jan), the day we investigated, any choice of name gave a "System Error" response and then returned to the address selection screen, creating an indefinite loop of unsuccessful attempts.

The next test was to select an address at random, and this gave a list of names of people who presumably lived there.

This gives two major concerns:
•  When completing the Electoral Registration forms, residents have a legal right to opt for their name and address to be concealed from the publicly available list.  So when that concealed information is readily given to any casual observer through the planning website, the legality of displaying that information is suspect.  There is a significant difference in accessibility between examining a planning application and reading the name. of the person commenting along with their address, and the ability to look up any address to establish  associated names.  The Data Protection Act requires that the holder of personal data must declare what they intend to use the information for, and not use it for other purposes, and we doubt that this use has been properly authorised. Other legislation might have been breached too.  The Human Rights Act 1998 reinforces the Data Protection Act, and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life, his home and his correspondence".  Furthermore it states There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society ...  and B&NES, as a public authority,  cannot claim that this change to the planning system is necessary when it worked perfectly satisfactorily beforehand.
•  Public comments on planning applications usually have a name and address, and although the system would not prevent a false name and address being used, spot checks could detect whether the name used is compatible with the address quoted, thus limiting anybody wishing to supply false information to those the person commenting knows are correct.  This new system with a list of names being offered for any given address allows comments to be made on behalf of anybody, whether known or unknown to the person commenting, and these fakes would be virtually undetectable.  Anybody could sit at one of the public terminals in the Guildhall (and thus be untraceable through internet addressing) and enter several hundred letters of support or objection, all from real people who would never know they had been impersonated until the decision notice dropped through their letter box.

By Saturday (22 Jan), our tests could not continue because nothing worked, see the box above.  The Data Protection Registrar has the authority to order any unlawful computer system to be shut down, and we wonder if that is what happened.

One thing that should not be overlooked is that IDOX is a bought-in system, so the council (which means Council Tax payers) will have paid for this update to become an unacceptable system.  At the very least, whoever authorised this waste of money should apologise for it.  Also the comments system should revert to its original form.

What happens now?

That very much depends on whether on-line comment facilities are restored in their original format, which up until the recent change were acceptable.

If the new arrangement continues to be used, we suggest that everybody looks up their own address, and anybody who is unhappy about any or all of the names displayed should write to the Planning Development Manager asking for the disliked details to be removed from the system.  If your request is refused, you should ask the Data Protection Registrar to pursue it on your behalf.

At the same time, we recommend that all comments should be either submitted as correspondence or else through the "outside the area" screen, because these methods are difficult to use for anybody intent on fraudulent input, and case officers should recognise that and give due consideration to your comments.  As the area which you are outside is not defined, you can imagine it as small as is necessary in order to place yourself outside it, if you need to justify your choice.

Anybody who subsequently receives a Decision Notice letter for a planning application that they didn't comment on should refer it to the council's Monitoring Officer for investigation.

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Diary of Events:  February 2011

We were informed by Planning Services on Friday 4 February that the "Submit Comments" changes that have caused so much concern among our members about the amount of personal information made publicly available, and have caused so many difficulties in availability and usage, have now been removed.

This followed a series of tests which were run on Thursday to prove that the repaired system has worked.  During those tests the public were unable to use the system.

We recognise that Thursday's downtime, despite the inconvenience, was in a good cause, and we are grateful that Planning Services took the public's concerns seriously and did something about them promptly.  The on-line system appears to have worked satisfactorily since then:  we received no further reports of faults in the week that followed.

Less able to be forgiven was the extended outage a week later.  From Sunday 13th February until lunchtime Tuesday 15th there was no usable service.

The following week we had reports of service unavailability on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (23rd to 25th).  In the gaps in between, we noticed that the e-mail confirmation of comments submitted electronically omits information that was previously provided; specifically whether the submission was an objection a support comment or a general comment despite the tick boxes still being on the submission form. The only obvious reason we can see for this omission is to remove the ability to prove what was submitted when complaining that comments have been wrongly labelled when put on-line.  We have previously said that the on-line facilities are not fit for purpose.  The experience of 2011 so far is that first of all the reliability, and then the usability got even worse!

We had no reports of planning system service problems after 25th February, but a number of administrative errors have been brought to our attention.  There are examples of Delegated Reports saying that there have been no public comments on particular applications when the on-line system prior to the Decision Notice being filed showed that there had been comments.  There are examples of public comments filed as Application Forms and we wonder if the Case Officer has recognised them as comments.  There have been examples where documents filed as Delegated Reports, when opened proving to be duplicates of the associated Decision Notice.

The latter one is just a filing error, easily corrected, we imagine.  But the former two are worrying.  Is the system as delivered to the Case Officer's desk so bad that despite the public making comments they are not available to the Case Officer and thus cannot be taken into account;  or is the pressure to meet targets so great that case officers are drafting their reports before the time for public comments expires?  Both are unacceptable.

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Diary of Events:  March 2011

On Sunday morning (13 March) the Application Search facility was unavailable, though it was working again in the afternoon.

Prior to that Sunday we noticed that some of the missing Delegated Reports have now been put on-line;  the wrong description of documents continues to take place sporadically, and we have found a few more examples where the case officer has stated in their Delegated Report that there were no public comments when we know that there were some.

A week later, we noticed that the incidences of erroneous descriptions on planning files continues.  The Bath Preservation Trust must be feeling particularly hard done by:  we found an objection of theirs filed as a support comment on one application and labelled as a comment by the Environment Agency on another.  If whoever puts these files on the on-line system can't do so more reliably, then somebody else should be checking their work.  Leaving it for the public to find the errors just isn't good enough.

We had reports of planning system service problems on Tuesday 22nd March, and when we next checked on Wednesday 23rd, it was still not working.  That is another two days when the availability of paper files would have allowed research on planning applications to be carried out.  The fragile on-line service, when provided as the sole means of examining planning applications, has proved to be not fit for purpose yet again.

To finish off the month of March with a whimper, we were notified that on 31st March the planning website was again not working.

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Diary of Events:  April 2011

April started the way March ended:  the planning website was again not working on Thursday 7th April, and even when the application search facilities came back into use later in the evening, there was still no access to the individual documents.  We have also received a series of complaints of very slow response times most evenings after 6pm during the first week of April.

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Diary of Events:  May 2011

May has been relatively trouble free.  A short spell of slow responses was reported during the evening of 18th May.  An evening described as giving the documents eventually, but after such a long delay that the system was almost unusable on 20th May.  No complete failures were reported.

A delay in getting documents on-line is becoming prevalent, particularly for revised drawings.  One applicant contacted us and invited us to meet him to give our opinion on some revised drawings which he had submitted to the council three weeks before and had not yet appeared on-line.  They appeared on the planning website a few days later, so he had suffered nearly a month's delay.

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Diary of Events:  June 2011

After a spell of relatively reliable service in May, perhaps as a result of lower usage over all the bank holidays, June started with another total failure.

It was first reported during the afternoon of Friday 3rd when access was erratic and considerable patience was needed to get the occasional access to documents, gradually getting worse until Friday evening when gaining sight of planning documents was almost as rare as winning the lottery.  Between Saturday morning and late Sunday afternoon, nothing could be accessed, not even the application summaries (and for some of that time the entire council website was unavailable).  There was a very slight improvement Sunday evening, when the Application Search facility occasionally worked, but no access to planning documents was possible on the rare occasions when the summary could be viewed.  The Application Search facility worked a little more often on Monday morning (6 June), but still with no access to planning documents.  It was impossible to lodge comments on any planning applications from the Friday afternoon to the Monday evening.  Normal service seemed to be resumed Monday evening.

The facility to lodge application comments was again not working during the evening of Wednesday 15th June.

The system has demonstrated once again the need for out-of-hours support staff to fix it whenever it goes wrong.  Given that without the ability to examine printed plans, many people study them on-line at evenings and weekends, there is a definite need for reliability at those times.

We received a report of problems with the on-line planning system during the morning of Wednesday 22nd June.  Initially there was no access to planning applications at all, and then later the summaries became available but the associated documents could not be retrieved.  The problem was fixed later the same day.

June ended the way it started, with service problems.  On Thursday 30th June there was access to the application summary but all attempts to view individual documents resulted in an error message.  By the evening, the error had become intermittent, with only some attempts to view documents failing.  It was then that another problem was seen, in that some documents retrieved did not contain the contents described.  On one application reported to us, three different document descriptions revealed the same drawing.

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Diary of Events:  July 2011

Like June, July started, with service problems.  On Sunday 3rd July there was no access to the application files.

At around 4pm on Saturday16th July the planning website stopped working, and usage was only restored mid afternoon on Sunday 17th July.  To make matters worse, the entire council website (not just the planning facility) stopped working late on the Saturday and was not restored until around 1pm Sunday afternoon.

A further failure was reported on the evening of Wednesday 20th July.

We have noticed a worrying increase in the number of Decisions recorded without an Officer's Report, and in one case an Appeal Decision is present without any of the preceding appeal documents being on-line.  If the on-line system is all that the public can refer to, it must be updated promptly and it must be a complete record.

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Diary of Events:  August 2011

We are discovering that the incidence of delays in getting documents on line now includes documents that are essential for a proper public consultation.

We support the concept of case officers negotiating with applicants to get amendments to applications that are not acceptable as presented but could be made so.  In terms of effort, it must be beneficial to all concerned to avoid having to deal with a complete new resubmission.  However, the council's Code of Conduct requires amendments to be available for public scrutiny for 14 days before determination, and it is simply not acceptable to have decision notices issued that refer to drawings that have not been placed on-line before the decision date.  The public comments on the revised drawings might have affected the decision;  as a minimum the opportunity to do so must be provided.
New rules are required, that dates are based on when documents are visible to the public, not on when they are received.

If B&NES is to continue with its policy of planning application documents only being made available electronically, then it is against the dates of that availability that the ability of the council to meet Government guidelines on public consultation should be measured.

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The on-line services between 15th August and 22nd August were almost non-existent (we described them at the time as being dreadful, disastrous, awful, dire, dismal, and calamitous, in that order).

The first report of problems was Monday 15th during the late evening, when the service was seen to run slower and slower until it failed and attempts to use it received an apology message instead of the expected reply screen.  Half an hour later we discovered that if the full address of a document was known, it could be retrieved, but of course nobody normally knows the full address of a document without accessing it through the (now unusable) application display facility;  a browser's history can only identify what has already been looked at.

By mid-morning on Tuesday the situation had been reversed.  It was then possible to use the Application Search facility to find an application, but it was not possible to view the list of associated documents.  Nor was it possible to read a document by entering the full address.  That situation continued all through Tuesday and into Wednesday morning.

Eventually, from Wednesday lunchtime, it was possible to use the system fairly normally, though as the day progressed the response times got slow, probably when people discovered it was working and tried to catch up,  Some time during Thursday (we were not given a time) the situation reverted to the position on Tuesday afternoon:  it was possible to use the Application Search facility to find an application, but it was not possible to view the list of associated documents.  That remained the position all through Friday and the weekend, and into the morning of Monday 22nd.  With the exception of a few hours, there had been no access to planning facilities for a week.

In view of the lack of service, we recommended that there should be a moratorium on determining planning applications until after the on-line services have been restored and fully operational for a week, to give those who might want to examine planning applications and make comments the opportunity to do so and have their views taken into account in the decision making process.  That suggestion was ignored.

As a footnote, the main council website, which was operational until Saturday afternoon, did not work when we tried to access it Sunday afternoon, the 21st.  Attempted accesses simply timed out.  That problem was fixed by the Monday morning.

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Diary of Events:  September 2011

There were two problems with the on-line services reported to us during the week in which August gave way to September.  On the Tuesday evening (30 August) attempts to use the service gave an apology message at first, and then no response at all when tested again later.  The service was restored after a few hours.  On the Friday evening (2 September) the response was painfully slow when accessing planning documents, but it didn't stop completely.

For the remainder of the month there were only occasional problems.  On Wednesday 14th September the on-line facilities were reported not working in the evening.  On Thursday 15th the Property Search facility did not work in the evening.  On Monday 19th September the response times were painfully slow, with pages often timing out before anything was displayed, requiring re-tries.

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Diary of Events:  October 2011

After a quiet start to the month, we suddenly received reports from members that the council's on-line system looked different, and complaints that some of the links on this website did not work.

When we investigated we discovered that the council's system had been changed. On the council website was the announcement
** Public Access has been replaced with a similar facility for viewing planning applications online. The new system has been designed to replicate most of the functionality that was available through the old system. These include application address searching, viewing planning application documentation and submitting comments online. In addition, you may want to replace any old shortcut links or web favourites you may have as the web address is different for this replacement facility. **

We tested our "old shortcut links" as suggested and stopped counting when we reached 200 that needed changing.  Then came the task of working out what to change them to.

We investigated the new system.  There are a couple of nice additions, but some significant drawbacks:
•  We liked the easy access to the previous planning applications for a property under the "Property History" tab which saves the search through the Property Details facility required under the old system.
•  The little map that appears alongside the application summary, if it works, is a nice touch.
•  The single enquiry box that functions when the Return key is used is an improvement over the previous system where using the return key annoyingly defaulted to a calendar look-up.

But oh dear! Where to start with the new problems:
•  Displaying the little map is erratic with the outcome depending on which browser is used and how it is set up.  Internet Explorer, the most widely used browser displays the map correctly unless it has been changed from the default settings to improve security when the positioning of the map can go awry.  An older version set for low risk browsing shows only part of the map with the remainder disappearing off the bottom of the screen.  Firefox is the second most popular browser, and Version 3 displays the map but Version 2 leaves the map area out completely.  Different results from different browsers usually indicates coding errors so we passed the coding of one page through a World Wide Web Consortium validation service for a report on the coding and received a validation report identifying 21 errors where the coding is invalid, and 5 warnings of bad coding practice.
•  The old system allowed comments to be submitted on-line until a decision was placed on file, when the "Submit Comments" option disappeared;  the new system removes the equivalent "Comments are invited" option when the "Expiry Date for consultation" is passed, replacing it with "Comments are no longer invited for this application".  Note the word "invited".  Until now, there has always been the ability to comment until a decision is made;  indeed we had previously been assured that late comments made on applications to be decided by the DCC would be taken into account in the officer's brief to the Committee.  So to meet this obligation, although the new system might not "invite" comments it ought to still be possible to submit them.  Our technicians have analysed the coding and it is possible to submit comments after the invitation is no longer made, but there are snags, more of which later.

•  The old system allowed comments to be up to 6000 characters.  The new one sets a much lower limit of 2000 characters.  A quick review of Watchdog comments showed that a small proportion were over 6000 characters and we had submitted them by e-mail.  The majority were less than 6000 characters but were rather more than 2000 characters, so for our purposes the new on-line system of submitting comments is going to be virtually useless.  We wonder whether the staff effort of handling all the submissions that will not fit into 2000 characters has been taken into account when the decision was taken to change the system?  The old system had reliability problems, but at least when it was working it could handle the majority of comments submitted.
•  The old system provided a confirmation page showing the text accepted, which could be readily used to create our website files of comments submitted.  Having to work from the confirmation e-mail (assuming that there is still a confirmation e-mail - we haven't tested that yet!) by removing all the e-mail formatting is extra work for us that was not previously necessary.  Incidentally, there is a grammatical error in the confirmation message from the new system: "you're comment has been recorded" should be "your comment has been recorded", yet another indication of a lack of quality assurance of the product.
•  Because of the inclusion of the map, the amount of data transmitted is far greater than when using the old system.  We know some of our members still use dial-up and some have usage caps, and both these groups will be hampered in the number of applications they can look at in future.  Others will find the intermediate screen between entering the application number and getting to the detailed screen a tedious addition.

The council website says that comments on applications can be submitted by post or on-line.  Given the system as delivered permits only short comments for a relatively short time, these limitations will either deter people from commenting (which would be contrary to the Council's Code of Practice) or could flood the mail room with paper.

So we are offering two services.  The first is an e-mail address to save posting written comments.  Write your comments on your computer as though writing a letter, then attach the saved file to this e-mail address and send it.  (The e-mail address can be found in the Planning area of the council website, but this link will save you hunting for it).

The second is a bit more complicated.  We consider the quick links we provide to applications to be an important public service, so making them work again became a priority, even if we can't do anything about the 2000 character limitation.  We found that it was possible to get to the screen where you can submit comments, even though comments might not be "invited".  Unfortunately, unlike the previous system which blocked the comment facility once a decision had been made, the new system doesn't seem to be as clever.  We didn't try it (it would have been wrong to do so), but it looks as though having got to the Submit Comments screen, it would be possible to comment on an application that has already been decided.  We have therefore had to expand our comment submission links:  The "Make Comment" link is now preceded by one which takes you to the application details.  Use this one first and look for a "Decision" line.  If it is there, it shows that it is too late to comment and you must not use the "Make Comment" link.

The council's website states:  The new system has been designed to replicate most of the functionality that was available through the old system.  We are not convinced that it was designed to do that at all.  It bears all the hallmarks of an off-the-shelf product that is a rough approximation of the previous system, and nobody examined it closely enough to see whether it is actually suitable for what the public expect of it.  As an additional facility to the paper planning files it would have its uses, but B&NES has only provided on-line facilities and that places far higher demands on the on-line functionality.  To our technicians the new system doesn't look beyond repair, but whether anyone will spend the time and effort mending it only time will tell.  As a precaution, we have taken an archive back-up of our website pages that use the old system, just in case the decision is taken to revert to it.  Looking up 200+ planning applications in a hurry to obtain new link addresses is not something we want to do again!

To cap it all, during the Sunday afternoon, the 9th October, there was a spell when the council's normal website stopped working, and a spell when having used the new system to find planning applications, trying to look at the planning documents resulted in an "internal error".  So the new system didn't bring improved reliability either on that day.

We received reports of failures of the on-line system on Friday 21st October, when initially the application overview screen was available but the link to planning documents did not work, followed by a spell when nothing worked.  Having received the reports, we tested and discovered that some functions were blocked for a while by a request to enter a username and password (which of course we do not have).  By mid afternoon the problems seemed to have been cured.

The following week, on Friday 28th October, the same fault was seen again in the early evening.  It did not last so long though, and later that evening full service was restored.

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Diary of Events:  November 2011

November was only a few days old when the first problem was seen.  On Thursday 3rd November, in the early evening. the application search screen worked and gave the summary screen, but all attempts to access documents were blocked by a screen asking for username and password.  This situation persisted overnight and into the following morning.  It was not until early afternoon on Friday 4th that full service was restored.

 

Diary of Events:  December 2011

We received no further reports of failures during December, although we received some complaints that a few documents seemed to be missing from the most recent on-line additions.

Our own checks while doing the website update discovered that there was an apparent corruption in the database where a planning application for a particular address existed, but the address itself appeared to be unknown to the system.  Development Control reported that this particular application was still in validation and should not be available because of that, which may be true but does not explain why we were able to access the application in August but not in December.

We received some complaints that the system prevents comments sometimes when comments are still expected to be made.  The specific case in point is the application for Gammon Plant Hire site, where the DCC deferred a decision because new documents had been lodged and the public had not had the opportunity to comment on them, yet the planning system stated that comments are no longer invited.  We established that anybody who wanted to comment could do so by e-mail to Development Control, quoting the application number in the subject line, but that creates additional work for the person wishing to comment and the staff in Development Control.  It circumvents the problem rather than solving it.

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Diary of Events:  January 2012

On 29th January we received a report that when an application search by address was made, it gave a reply "A problem has ocurred in the repeater process, either obtaining data or replacing tags.  Please check Datashare configuration and template."  We had no idea what this means (and we note the wrong spelling of "occurred").  The cause was not immediately obvious either, because our own test search by address we made when we received the report produced the normal expected result.  We undertook further testing at intervals.

It was during this testing that we reproduced the error ourselves and were thus able to explain the cause.  If a search by address is made for a valid address, but one which has not had a planning application lodged against it, then the message reported is the message which is returned.  It is reasonable for a system to report that an address has no associated planning applications in plain English;  it is not acceptable to respond in meaningless (and incorrectly spelt) jargon.

Furthermore, we said when the new system came in that the search by address was nowhere near as useful as the old facility it replaced, which was able to report all the valid addresses in a given street, regardless of whether or not they had raised any planning applications.  Now we know that the new system cannot be used just to establish whether an address is genuine, a useful facility under the previous system, and that the address search in the new system is also flawed.

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Diary of Events:  February 2012

We received a report of a problem with the planning system on Tuesday 7th February.  During the morning it was noticed that although the application search facility was working normally and the summary information was displayed, all attempts to view the associated documents resulted in a screen asking for a username and password, which of course no member of the public has (or normally needs).  The fault had been rectified by early afternoon.

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