Arun District Council’s Planning Office: Property Planning from the Comfort of Your Home or Office

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One four-letter word is an absolute requirement for both the well-known paper-folding art of origami and for successful building projects: P – L – A – N. It is almost impossible to be too excessive or too thorough. The only problem with a methodical plan is that it takes time. In origami and in building projects, patience is a virtue. Folding undesirable creases in paper and digging into electric cables both have serious consequences.

Background

Located in the heart of southeastern England, Arun District Council is responsible for an estimated 141,000 residents of Bognor Regis, Arundel, and Littlehampton. The region is divided into two distinct areas on both sides of the Arun River: the eastern region, which is framed by the historic castle town of Arundel and the urban seaside town of Littlehampton, and the western region, which includes the seaside resort of Bognor Regis and surrounding villages. The Council has a diverse palette of responsibilities that range from housing to licensing, historic conservation, refuse collection, parking, public libraries, and much more. Some of the operations critical to the quality of life in Arun are well-planned construction, renovation, and other changes to the business, civic, and private dwellings within the Arun District. The planning office is charged with organizing these services.

Plan: an important four-letter word

The planning office receives requests for all kinds of physical planning, including requests to install signage, changing the use of properties, amending rooflines, making additions to buildings and dwellings, undertaking demolition, and performing tree surgeries. Currently the Planning department receives approximately 2500 proposals each year for land and properties in their area. When a customer makes a request, six copies of each set of plans (which are often oversized) must be provided in order that they can be put on public display so that consultation with statutory agencies can take place. Each request is either approved, denied, or amendments are requested. Every time that a change is made, all of the papers must be re-submitted. In addition, all parties involved or affected by the change must be notified; the new plans must be drawn up on paper and reviewed on site at the planning office.

Until the recent implementation with OITUK and the DocFinity suite of electronic document management solutions, the review and approval process at the planning office was slow and painstaking. The awkward nature of oversized paper plans and blueprints, coupled with the time needed to pull, copy, change, approve, and re-file plans, resulted in long waiting times. The handling time before a plan could be used for consultation was considerable, leading to delays in the architect or member of the public receiving a response.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Although the public could access the records electronically back to 1948, they could not access the actual street, block, floor, elevation, or other various-sized plans electronically. Just like a real origami bird is more illustrative than a thousand verbal descriptions, the physical plans were of critical importance to everyone who had a vested interest in any proposed property changes. Although the Government mandate meant that the records would have to become electronic, the size of the documents, the need for accurate scales, and the overlay of different layers in some of the construction and renovation designs presented a real challenge.

In addition to these trials, the planning office required a vendor to integrate the chosen technology with Ocella planning software, which is used to manage all the planning transactions between various parties. When the planning office began considering vendors and their solutions, OITUK and the DocFinity suite of products was presented as a viable contender, since Arun District Council had been working with the company and its products in their Revenues and Benefits department successfully since 1998. After reviewing several possibilities, the council’s planning consultant Maureen Chaffe recommended OITUK. Maureen commented that OITUK proved they were more than able to meet the requirements, even though this would be OITUK’s first experience of working with a planning office within Local Government. OITUK’s staff bent over backwards to create and deliver a solid plan. For every challenge that was presented by the planning office, OITUK responded promptly with a detailed proposal. With the introduction of DocFinity, the origami-like paper folds in the blueprints and plans, as well as often lengthy queues to see the documents, were both about to become memories.

Arun’s case for going electronic

The impetus for converting the paper-based system to a system of electronic access came as a result of the Government mandating that 100% of council services in Britain needed to be electronic by 2006. Prior to November of 2005, the plans were mostly created on oversized A0 paper (drawing paper), folded to A4 (standard letter size). Like origami directions, all of the papers were hand numbered and stamped. To complicate matters for the architects, contractors, and even the general public, the plans could only be viewed in person during regular business hours.

Scanning for the planning office had to be done for A0 (drawing) size. The software needed to house a scaling tool for images, and also needed to allow for veiled images to be inserted into the plans. The plans also needed to be numbered electronically for accuracy and for easy archival and retrieval.

No more origami in the office

Since the implementation of DocFinity, Arun District Council’s planning office no longer needs to make people wait for weeks to access proposals. The plans are scanned, indexed and made available on the web site within days of their arrival in the Planning office and this means that the public and statutory agencies have more time to view them and input their comments. Further development work is now underway to change the manner of consultation to use the DocFinity product to attach images to e-mails, thereby speeding the process further and making savings in postage and consumables. By visiting Arun District Council’s website at any time of any day, from any location around the world, anyone who has an interest in building plans can access them soon after submission. The material is well organized and the software is easy to use: the proposals are listed by the week in which they are filed, then further classified by the western and eastern region and sorted by the town, village or hamlet. The address and description of the proposed changes are given, and scanned images are displayed with ease via an integrated viewer. Anyone can make comments on the proposals and the indication of the scale of proposed changes helps viewers to understand the full impact of potential changes. Neighbors can see how close a planned extension will be to their property, using a unique measurement tool developed by OITUK, and respond to the proposals electronically, which drastically reduces the number of curious and potentially upset callers if a proposal is not to their liking. Concerns can be addressed as soon as they are received, eliminating not only the wait, but also the worry.

Arun District Council today – it’s your kind of place

When you visit the Arun District Council website, you will see the heading, “Welcome to Arun – It’s our kind of place.” Thanks to OITUK, DocFinity software, and the detailed preparation of the planning office, thousands of people will doubtlessly think “Thanks to Arun District Council’s website, we can plan from the comfort of our offices and living rooms…….it’s OUR kind of place!” For engineers, architects, contractors and homeowners, no more waiting at the planning office means more time for constructive activity - like real origami - at home.