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What is digital planning?

The Mayor has provided funding to put an open data strategy at the heart of London government. This will support innovative technology solutions to be developed which enable Londoners to access and use public services and information more easily and efficiently.

The Mayor is working with organisations like FutureGov, Connected Places Catapult, the London Office of Technology (LOTI) and Central Government (Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government) to realise specific projects which will use open data to make the planning system more accessible to Londoners.

Open data sets are already available from the London Datastore. The London Datastore is a free and open data-sharing portal where anyone can access data relating to the capital.  Whether you’re a citizen, business owner, researcher or developer, the site provides over 700 datasets to help you understand the city and develop solutions to London’s problems.

Transport for London (TfL) opened their data over 10 years ago. This included all sorts of data, not just underground and bus timetables. Free of charge open data on cycle hire, air quality, coach parking and more was also provided. Private sector software developers then used this free data to produce innovative apps and software useful for all Londoners.

The Mayor is bringing together planning data from across all of London’s Boroughs to create a live hub of information here on this website. Real time, open-to-all data about planning in London will be provided alongside tools to enable analysis by all – town planners, other professionals and Londoners.

Whilst some tools will be provided by the Mayor on this website, the data is open to all and we fully expect the marketplace to create software and apps in the same way as it did for TfL data. This will make the data useful and accessible to all Londoners. This will do for the planning system what open data did for Transport for London.

In the first instance data needs to be bought together from across London’s Boroughs and public agencies. Often information is stored by London Borough’s in different ways. We will be working on standardising the collection of this data and then opening this up as a public resource.

This will enable quicker decision making, better services, more efficient government and greater transparency.

The open data will be a live evidence base on which to make decisions about the future.

It will:

  • enable the creation of new apps that give an insight into the planning system and will influence decisions that affect communities.
  • stimulate new tools to have more transparent decision making. Uncertainty causes delays, therefore this will speed up the planning system and the delivery of much needed housing.
  • increase what people know about the proposals i.e. who owns the property?, what are the infrastructure requirements? and what is the environmental impact?
  • enable our service providers i.e. water, gas and electricity to plan for the impact of new development as they can ensure they have capacity for the development which is coming forward.
  • reduce the administrative burden on Borough’s, freeing up resource to concentrate on quicker and more effective decision-making. Creating a speedier, more effective planning system.

Projects relating to open sources of data in the planning system are often referred to as ‘#plantech’. Also, projects relating to open sources of data in the property sector are often referred to as ‘#proptech’. The movement to see more digital transformation in local government is often referred to as ‘#fixtheplumbing’. These terms are useful hashtags to search for those wanting to find out more.

These are some useful links to organisations that the Mayor is working with on to make London a ‘Smart City’. A ‘Smart City’ is a government funded project that uses tech and digital to interact with citizens. A ‘Smart City’ is based on high quality and robust open source data.

Some links are provided below on articles published on work so far.

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