A council planning officer who has been reading articles published by our sister publication Scottish Construtction Now on Scotland’s Broken Planning System has blown the whistle on the technological barriers facing local authority planning departments.
I work for a local authority planning department and see first-hand the frustration of developers in getting projects through the planning process. A number of your commentators have mentioned working from home as a barrier to collaboration, however, I do not think this is the full picture.
More so now than ever, colleagues are using MS Teams to discuss cases, have meetings and many would argue that they are far more productive at home. However, a balance certainly needs to be struck as graduate planners and new staff greatly benefit from in-person learning and leadership.
I would argue that a much more pressing issue is the technology (or lack of) that the planning authority uses. There is a single programme through which all information is stored and assessed and it is incredibly slow, unintuitive and outdated. I believe most if not all planning departments have to use this same programme and have no alternative options.
It cannot work alongside Microsoft programmes such as Outlook and Word, cannot view DWG files and technical errors are a daily occurrence. Simple tasks that should take five minutes can take up to an hour and this is what planners have to contend with day in and day out. Processes like discharging...
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