Turning to the cloud to plan for the future of public services

Anglesey County Council has turned to the cloud to drop paper and increase efficiencies

The Isle of Anglesey County Council is the governing body for Anglesey, an island off the north-west coast of Wales. Serving just over 69,000 residents, the island's natural and built environments are vital to the tourism sector, but it's important that proposed developments are in keeping with Anglesey's unique, local features.

As part of the Council's five-year plan, we wanted to find alternative models that would modernise the way we delivered our planning and economic development services. This vision includes using technology to transform the way planning and building control services are delivered to ensure cost and time efficiencies, as well as delivering valuable services that improve the quality of life for everyone on the island.

The digital challenges

Having previously used a mixture of paper-based processes and inflexible legacy systems to manage planning and building control applications, Anglesey Council's planning officers often faced a time-consuming process with a disjointed system. With the previous systems hosted on-premise, users would experience periods of downtime when the network was impacted or upgrades were being carried out.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to manage information and generate reports. We realised that our data needed to be centralised and made more accessible, not only to our Council employees and planning officers but also residents.

Additionally, with a desire to increase the use of the Welsh language in the Council and promote its use across communities and local organisations, we needed any new solution to be bilingual, accommodating both the island's Welsh and English-speaking users.

Utilising the cloud for digital transformation

To help build and deliver a new planning and building control portal, we turned to Arcus Global and its planning, building control and public portal applications, which have been designed for local authorities. Arcus oversaw the implementation and a series of integrations between our existing document management system, Salesforce, and the new solutions.

The new cloud-based planning and building control applications have enabled our officers to record and process all applications, notifications and enquiries received by building control services. It also gives a single source of data which allows users to view the history of a site or a case, along with the relevant contact history. We now have a reliable and scalable platform in place to enable users to focus on generating insight and driving business efficiency.

Before going live with the public portal, the Council would have to consult on new planning applications by post. The software gives us the functionality to process applications enquiries, appeals and enforcements quickly and easily. Accept payments, query spatial data and satisfy consultation requirements. Likewise, the building control team are now able to communicate electronically with citizens and stakeholders, managing inspection dates in one place.

To make it easy for members of the public to view and consult on planning applications, we've also rolled out a public portal, powered by the same provider. Built using Salesforce technology, the platform integrates with our planning system, allowing residents to view key information relating to planning applications. Additionally, the portal was bilingual, making it easy to navigate for both Welsh and English-speaking users.

Benefits of going paperless

This all means the planning team are using much less paper than before, as all documents relating to planning and building applications are available through an integration between the Arcus applications and the Council's existing document management system.

The feedback from the island's residents on the new public portal has been very positive. Our local members and consultees are happy to have a system in place which is very easy to use. Information is well presented, and has been easy to follow for both our Welsh and English-speaking residents.

By switching to a cloud-based application, we have increased the performance and availability of our building and planning systems. Upgrades now take minutes to complete instead of hours, and the Council hasn't experienced any downtime since going live.

With the planning and building control process all online and easily accessible, we have enabled our employees to work remotely, accessing the system from anywhere, at any time. Planning officers can navigate the system whether they are working from home, in a remote office or on-site. Uploading documents and sending emails are all within the same application, which ultimately allows them to be productive wherever they are, on any device.

This has also hugely benefited our Joint Planning Policy Unit, which handles all planning policy enquiries relating to the Isle of Anglesey and Gwynedd Local Planning Authority. The switch to a cloud-based application has meant the planning team no longer have to sift through paper files to find the information they need. On top of that, it has become easier to drill down into the information and generate reports.

Planning officers at Anglesey Council often have to carry out research for the unit, both on a regular and ad-hoc basis. With the new system in place, it's become simpler to find and share information. The search functionality makes it easy to locate specific documents relating to an application; an officer can search to find any planning applications, building control enforcements or land searches associated with a particular email address. Thishas saved us days in terms of the time taken to generate reports; in some instances it just wasn't possible to get the information we needed using the old system.

Working remotely, adapting to the pandemic

The restrictions to our daily work and travel have been a fantastic test for the system. The entire Council has been working from home for the past 18 weeks and our planning, building and public platforms have been working perfectly - showing our employees they can carry on as normal without being in the office. It just goes to show what a difference being cloud-based makes.

Elena White is business systems manager at Anglesey Council