| CASE STUDIES | September 2006 |
Oxford City Council CAPS its planning process
to improve efficiency and increase resident access
LIKE all other local councils, Oxford City Council has had to minimise expenditure due to the limits placed on council tax increases by central government. In a bid to meet this objective, Oxford City Council needed to streamline its entire planning process, from departmental interaction to obtaining third-party comment. It recognised that posting planning information on its website would increase efficiency by freeing up staff time, because residents could download information themselves, rather than phoning or visiting the council. This in turn would drive down costs.
In addition, the Pendleton criteria for e-planning called for councils to make access to planning information more readily available. As a direct response to this, Oxford City Council wanted to ensure that residents could easily find relevant planning information online, 24 hours a day.
Another issue facing the council was the time it was taking to process planning applications. Janice Brown, property systems team leader at Oxford City Council, explains:
“It’s the responsibility of staff in the planning department to record information about matters such as listed buildings, tree preservation orders, local plans, appeals and enforcements, and they need to have this information on hand to cross-reference with every application being processed. It was taking staff a long time to gather together all the information required to view just one property history, because the data was stored in paper format and spread across several different office locations."
The time taken to gather information, coupled with the format in which it was kept, meant the process was lengthy and difficult to manage. Oxford City Council therefore needed all of its information to be stored on a central database. This would also prove essential to making planning applications accessible online.
Taking action
When Oxford City Council decided to implement new planning services, the IT department looked at a variety of vendors and carried out a detailed analysis of the options. Janice Brown explains why Oxford City Council opted for CAPS Solutions' software:
“Primarily, CAPS Solutions stood out because its UNI-form software allows different council departments to share information. For example, the data we hold in planning can also be used by officers in environmental health. These joined-up services allow us to increase efficiency, because rather than staff having to put in requests to view information from other departments, they can obtain the data from one central database. We also favoured CAPS Solutions because its software allows us to have control over our system administration. With our previous provider we had to wait for them to visit the site to update our system. Because CAPS Solutions software is so intuitive, we can easily input information ourselves.”
Once it began working with CAPS Solutions, Oxford City Council discovered 900 unresolved planning cases that had been neglected while staff were using the old paper-based process. The central database now ensures that no applications escape the attention of the planning officers. Planning applications awaiting a decision now stand at an average of 300 at any one time.
Prior to implementing the UNI-form solution, it took planning staff three days to register an application. This is now typically completed in less than one working day, because staff can obtain all the necessary details from the central UNI-form resource much more quickly.
Meeting the online challenge
Using CAPS Solutions' planning PublicAccess function, Oxford City Council found it straightforward to achieve all 21 Pendleton points for improving online public access to planning information. PublicAccess lets the council automatically present planning information from its UNI-form database via its existing website, without manual intervention. As soon as a record in the database is updated, the information published on the web is refreshed, ensuring that the public always has access to the latest data, revisions and comments.
Residents are reaping the benefits of PublicAccess by downloading and submitting planning application forms via the council’s website. They can also access maps to help them complete their application, or view and comment on planning applications in their area. The online solution removes the need for people to phone or visit the council in order to obtain information, saving them time and freeing up council resources.
Other projects
Oxford City Council has also adopted CAPS Solutions' software in other departments, including environmental health and licensing. The environmental health department has been using UNI-form software to record and identify problem areas. The licensing department has been able to meet the new licensing law brought into force in November 2005, which make it the responsibility of local councils to process licensing applications. CAPS Solutions software has helped Oxford City Council to cope with the huge surge in licensing applications that the law generated. The council has also implemented CAPS Solutions Licensing PublicAccess and ConsulteeAccess systems for online licensing, and will be using the new PublicAccess Local Development Framework system.
“Our work with CAPS Solutions is ongoing, and we are already benefiting from the fact that the software gathers and unites information from disparate departments. Officers in environmental health can access planning application details from the planning department, just as they can tap into the information that the licensing authority holds on site licensing hours. Because the software has the same look and feel, we do not have to train staff on new modules, and they can easily access the information from other departments themselves. Shared information is the key to increasing staff efficiency and making the most of available resources in the public sector. CAPS Solutions is helping us work towards this goal,” says Janice Brown.
CAPS Solutions. Tel: + 44 (0)1635 565900; www.caps-solutions.co.uk
Oxford City Council. www.oxford.gov.uk/
