Facing the challenge of re-designing planning in Northern Ireland

A shared infrastructure will speed delivery and make it easier to share data across Councils

As digital transformation has accelerated within the public sector in recent years, our Planning Authorities are looking for solutions that provide efficiencies, improved performance and above all else, a better customer experience. Northern Ireland has long considered the importance of technology in planning and it has taken this view by putting tech front and centre of service improvements, with central and local government recently coming together for the first time with a new shared regional IT solution.

The project will modernise and improve the digital infrastructure at a time when the response to the pandemic has accelerated the use of digital submissions across many councils.

It was also important to procure a new shared IT system, not least because of the financial and resource benefits, but also for the majority of users who will have just one system to familiarise themselves with.

In June 2020, we announced that Northern Ireland's Department for Infrastructure (Dfl) and 10 councils in the region, including Belfast, had awarded a £14 million contract to a consortium of planning services. This combined the expertise of TerraQuest's knowledge of planning service delivery, DEF Software's user-friendly planning software solution and Planning Portal's online planning application submission service.

There are lots of important reasons that led to this decision. For example, the existing system - which served the former Department of Environment well when it was centrally responsible for all planning powers - was coming towards the end of its life.

With each Council wanting to focus on the customer journey, and maximise the opportunities from a digital-first approach, it was time to come together and secure a new system that is modern, effective and better at meeting customer needs. Northern Ireland handles over 12,500 planning applications and administers over 32,000 regional property certificates annually, with a demanding set of service users, and our new system needs to meet all these expectations.

The new system will put online and paperless submissions at the heart of the business model, which will represent a more efficient and user-friendly system that is better for the environment, as well as making it easier for customers to submit planning applications. It will also help with improvements in capturing data and sharing it with other service areas across the Councils for forecasting and other planning decisions.

The new Planning IT system will also help to support flexible working, as it is accessible from a range of devices in multiple locations. The need for this has obviously been highlighted as a challenge during Covid-19, but it's also an ongoing requirement that reflects the needs of the modern workforce. The new approach will enable each authority to tailor their templates and reporting to their own style, which allows them the freedom and latitude to communicate with their customers in their own particular way.

There are further benefits outside council use. The new common front-end is designed with the customer in mind and will improve the user experience. They can now expect a consistent, quality approach when using the system.

Now is an ideal time to improve Northern Ireland's planning system and help its planning applications process run more efficiently, especially at a time of recovery after the lockdown periods during the pandemic.

The new system is expected to go live next summer, which will create a very positive step-change on how planning applications are submitted and processed across Northern Ireland. It will provide all parties interested within the planning process with a much easier way to interact with the system and improve access to documents at a time and place convenient to the user.

It will also allow Northern Ireland to realise the benefits of a modern back office planning system - benefitting both users and planning staff. This unique opportunity to deliver a new planning service will deliver huge efficiencies to Northern Ireland that modernises operations and improves performance across the Region.