Written Question: ePlanning

To ask the Scottish Government how many (a) businesses and (b) people have submitted online planning applications via the ePlanning Scotland website in each year since 2009, broken down by local authority, and what the average saving was.


Answered by Alex Neil (25/03/2015):Anyone who registers on the portal can set their account as either a ‘professional’ or a ‘general public’ user. The reason for this initial distinction is to customise their experience. As regular users of the portal professionals benefit from additional functionality made available to them. The general public are assisted with easy to use forms and guidance. The Scottish Government does not however retain information on the breakdown of applications submitted through the ePlanning portal by types of user, whether they be professionals, businesses or the general public.

The average saving per applicant is based on several factors associated with producing a traditional paper based application. This includes savings to be made from costs associated with printing technical drawings, design statements, visualisations etc. as well as the packaging and postage costs. Other savings are generated by the efficiencies the portal provides, freeing up the applicants time to work on other activities. None of these savings have a bearing on which planning authority is processing the application or who the applicant is; an average is applied across all applications.