Transforming the pace and quality of local authority planning

We understand that, despite ongoing public sector spending challenges, there is a need to deliver long-term regeneration strategies, solutions to tackle the housing shortfall, and to provide high quality development and regulatory services for local residents and businesses.

Already working with over 100 local authorities across the UK, we offer the full spectrum of planning policy, development management and specialist support services.

We help you to solve your complex planning challenges, increase productivity, enhance the use of technology and data, and improve the services to customers to support their development ambitions.

Our services give you immediate, on-demand access to planning professionals who can provide you with planning services for as short or as long as you need. We can also provide specialist resources to support your specific projects.

The sheer volume of planning applications dealt with by Capita has been very impressive and helped us immensely during a period when our planning section was under severe pressure.

Richard Evans, Principal Plannerat Warrington Borough Council

How it works

We provide flexible on-site and off-site solutions that can be dialled up or dialled down as required.

01

Delivery models

No two situations are the same so it makes sense for our delivery methods to be flexible and work to suit our customers needs.

02

Remote service delivery

We offer a remote service from one of our dedicated planning hubs situated throughout the UK. This can help local authorities who are struggling to deal with back office demand and includes managing a backlog of planning applications.

03

Local service delivery

The support from this delivery method would form the basis of a secondment type arrangement, with a significant proportion of the officers time spent in your office, under your direct supervision. This option allows you to manage and control the resources we are providing.

04

Blended service delivery

We are also able to split our resources between our dedicated planning hubs as well as being onsite to complete essential tasks working with your teams. This option best suits authorities looking to maintain high levels of productivity.

Our four key service areas

Planning resilience

With increasing case loads, pressure on resources and a focus on regenerating towns and cities, local authority planning departments are coming under more strain than ever before. As a result, many local authorities are struggling and in some cases, failing to meet their planning statutory requirements and government targets. Our planning resilience service provides support to authorities who do not have the in-house capacity to meet demand. In doing this, we free up resource availability so you can focus on the services that matter most to your residents and businesses.

Development management

Development management is the end to end management of planning applications in a positive way to foster the delivery of sustainable development. It’s about looking for solutions rather than problems and working proactively with applicants to secure development that improve economic, social and environmental conditions of the area for residents and businesses. With our vast commercial understanding and industry experience, we can help you help make informed decisions regarding your planning and development needs to support your projects in a compliant and well-managed manner.

Planning policy

We are experts across all fields of policy involved with planning. With the ability to handle all or part of the planning service, we offer project management to the delivery of the full range of planning policy documents, including local plans and supplementary planning documents; community infrastructure levy charging schedules; local development schemes; annual monitoring reports and statements of community involvement. 

Minerals and waste

Our highly qualified and experienced team can deliver a range of strategic and bespoke minerals and waste related projects of all sizes and complexities across the UK. This includes a range of services such as processing minerals and waste to renewable energy planning applications. We can also bring extra capacity and capability to your existing teams, so you can focus on what matters most to your residents.

100+

local authorities are working with us across the UK

14,000

hours of planning resilience support delivered every month

ResponsEye: enabling planning officers to complete inspections remotely

Our ResponsEye solution enables planning officers to complete inspections remotely by allowing applicants and agents to live video stream in real-time, directly to a planning officer, easily and securely from their smartphone during site inspections.

With increasing demands on local authorities and their teams, site inspections can be particularly time consuming with planning officers often required to travel large distances between sites. This is a unique opportunity to make inspections fully remote and more efficient.

Find out more

Looking for more information?

Our work

Local government
Property and infrastructure
Local government
Our work
01/03/2021
2 mins read
We’re working with Hambleton District Council to deliver its local plan, that delivers its vision as “a place to grow” by improving its residents’ quality of life and giving them a say in their community’s development.

Local government
Placemaking
Property and infrastructure
Local government
Property and infrastructure
Workplace
03/02/2021
2 mins read
We helped Baltic Creative CIC to win funding to develop flexible, affordable workspaces for new creative and digital businesses, attracting much-needed jobs and investment to Liverpool.
Read more

Our latest insights

How can we help your organisation progress?

Get in touch

Explore related solutions

01

Building control

We can manage all aspects of building control, freeing up your teams to deliver other core services to residents. Our solutions are flexible and can be switched on and off to meet demand.

Read more
02

Regulatory services

Our regulatory services team is helping local authorities – who don't have the capacity – to maintain efficiencies, reduce costs and protect their residents.

Read more
03

Property and infrastructure

We’re providing a comprehensive range of services, helping our clients to deliver everything from residential development to high speed rail.

Read more
Scroll Top

Get In Touch