Open Digital Planning: Month 6
November 2025 — Digital Planning Improvement Fund — Cohort 3
Summary
As we hit the six-month mark of our journey with the Planning Improvement Fund, November became a month defined by reflection.
As we hit the six-month mark of our journey with the Planning Improvement Fund, November became a month defined by reflection. While the hard graft of data cleansing continued in the background, we took a moment to look up, evaluate our progress, and share our learnings with the wider community at the Open Digital Planning Show and Tell.
Here is an update on our successes, the technical hurdles we are navigating, and what the roadmap looks like as we head toward the end of the year.
The Show and Tell: Sharing What We Learned
Presenting at this month’s ODP Show and Tell was a highlight for the team. Rather than just listing achievements, we took a step back to ask ourselves: “What would we have wanted to see when we started?”
We structured our presentation around providing practical, actionable advice for other Local Planning Authorities. It was about sharing the reality of the process, both the positives and the challenges, to help others navigate their own digital transformation journeys. The feedback was incredibly positive, and it reinforced the value of working in the open.
Data Successes: From Points to Polygons
On the technical front, we have hit several major milestones regarding our datasets.
Article 4 & Brownfield Data
We successfully uploaded our Article 4 dataset. Additionally, we have been in discussions regarding our Brownfield land data and have scheduled that upload for the New Year.
The Listed Buildings Breakthrough
A significant portion of our effort this month went into devising a robust method for cleansing our Listed Building datasets. Our goal is to move from simple point data to precise polygons.
We are currently on track to meet our upload targets using the following workflow:
- Compilation: We combined data downloads from the Historic England (HE) website with additional textual data requested directly from HE. This ensures we include the imperative “Details” information.
- Standardisation: We confirmed and compiled all data fields required by both ODP/MHCLG and HM Land Registry.
- GIS Integration: We created a new ODP Listed Buildings Layer in our GIS system (Earthlight) comprising all these identified fields and loaded the data.
- Plotting: We are currently in the process of plotting polygons for all 336 Listed Buildings. Adur is now complete, and we have approximately 50% of Worthing left to do.
The Challenges: Hidden Paper and Technical Glitches
Transparency is key to this project, so it is important to share where things haven’t gone exactly to plan.
The TPO Paper Chase
Just as we thought we had a handle on our Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs), our colleagues in Legal located more paper records. While this created unexpected additional work to review and digitise, it is ultimately a positive; it means the final dataset we upload will be of a much higher quality and completeness than originally anticipated.
Endpoint URL Frustrations
We encountered a limitation on the ODP side regarding dataset uploads. Despite our data passing through the checking service with no issues and containing all required fields, we discovered that the endpoint URLs for uploading datasets cannot be the same for the area files and the document files.
This requires us to create new endpoint URLs that effectively show the same data twice. In discussions at the data drop-in session, other LPAs agreed that this creates unnecessary extra work for authorities who are capable of supplying a single, comprehensive endpoint.
Transformation Prioritisation
Due to the heavy emphasis on data cleansing and the demand this places on the team, we have had to de-prioritize some of our wider transformation discovery work. We remain committed to restarting these initiatives in the New Year once the data foundation is solid.
What’s Next?
As we approach the holiday season, work will naturally slow down slightly, but our focus remains sharp:
- Listed Buildings: Complete the remaining polygon plotting for Worthing.
- TPOs: Continue the massive task of cleansing our biggest dataset, including the newly found records.
- Technical Fixes: Implement the solution for the endpoint URL issue to fix our “incomplete” statuses and re-upload the datasets.
- Discovery: Prepare to pick up the transformation discovery work in January.
See you next month!
