How does the location plan feature benefit me and why are you making this change?

For users, they will be able to draw the site boundary as part of their application journey on the Planning Portal using our simple tool - saving time and therefore money, on each application, or upload their own file. As an added benefit, planning professionals will be able to retrieve a copy of their location plan as a PDF or data file (GeoJSON format), for uploading directly into their own systems.

Local Planning Authorities will receive information in a standard way for each application, which is checked against legislative criteria - reducing the likelihood of an invalid location plan. The method will also reduce the manual effort involved in re-plotting the site location, and the user’s process will be the same for every application, regardless of which Local Authority receives it. We know from our experience, and the introduction of our payment service specifically, that this standardised approach brings greater efficiencies for all.