Planningportal Reviews

This is a common problem in the UK with

This is a common problem in the UK with services that you have to pay a fee for to a public body These clever Harries work by sticking themselves into the process of doing a planning application How it works is you upload your pdf drawings to them and their platform charges you a 60 fee for sending it to the planning office as you could have done yourself in an email quicker and better and with no terms and conditions such as signing away your rights if they e g spread viruses to your computer through incompetence You get this now in every walk of life whether it is a deed poll or a land registry check And various parts of our central and local government are well and truly in on this Kick them to the kerb and insist that your Council takes a direct application with ONLY the statutory fee they re allowed to in law The money you ll save isn t even the point it s about not having absolute carpetbaggers taking over everything

Should vet their advertisers

As a business that local councils require members of the public to use I do not think that the Planning Portal should accept advertisers without vetting them In the case of Studio Charrette they would see on Google and Trustpilot that they regularly fail to provide the services that they accept payment for and fail to make promised refunds

Strange relationship with Studio Charrette

Very strange relationship with Studio Charrette which the Planning Portal seems to promote at every opportunity - Thinking about solar panels Then contact Studio Charrette - Thinking about an extension Then contact Studio Charrette The Planning Portal enjoys a quasi monopoly on the submission of planning applications online and this close relationship with an architectural technician architectural designer seems very unusual If you look online at the reviews on Google for Studio Charrette the reviews are exclusively 1 by people who feel that they ve had poor service been scammed by Studio Charrette And many of these 1 reviews say that they went to Studio Charrette purely because of the association with The Planning Portal The nature of the relationship between The Planning Portal and Studio Charrette needs to be made much more transparent Studio Charrette DO NOT install solar panels - they are draftsmen architectural technicians The whole thing looks very murky and is not a good reflection on The Planning Portal

Terrible for another friend of some

Terrible for another friend of some politician to make money on the nation It started at 25 and now is 70 for someone who wants to add a rear room or dormer in the loft Add to this crazy planning process and you have recipe for disaster

NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE

If I could allocate zero stars I would do so Absolutely unfit for purpose The first box asks you to create your location plan If the site is anything other than a simple rectangle you need to use freehand plotting THIS DOES NOT WORK After the first few clicks the polygon snaps back to the start and a message informing you that your polygon appears to have intersecting lines appears and you have to start all over again This sequence repeats ad infinitum Additionally you have no ability to move the map base around the screen once plotting has started It is quite clear that the idiots producing this software have never actually used it in a real life situation Another failing is that there is an option to create labels to add to your location plan Having created the label s and saved the plan the plan when downloaded does not contain the labels I have previously reported these issues directly on the phone to a Planning Portal helpline but it was quite clear that there was absolutely zero intention to either escalate the problems or to even consider doing anything about them the customer is treated with total contempt

Not fit for purpose

After spending 1 5 hours on my application I made a minor change to the title to make it more descriptive which the portal readily allows you to do then the entire application was lost and no longer accessible I restarted the application from scratch and got to the part where it asks you to use the Requestaplan tool to specify a plan After persevering for another 1 hour I eventually gave up as the Requestaplan tool is terrible as evidenced by its 100 one star trustpilot reviews I phoned the council asking them what to do and they recommended that I use use downloadable forms rather than the planning portal Based on my experience the planning portal cannot be used for anything useful either looking up information or submitting a planning request To save every ones time it should be taken down and replaced which something that is fit for purpose

Absolute complete waste of time

Absolute complete waste of timeDo not bother Complete waste of money Get no more information than find online or local council site They are not willing to talk you through or find solutions Just tell you - planning needed pay the fee I was on the phone for less than 10 minutes but had to pay over 100 for that Do not bother or use

Expensive and doesn t work properly

The planning portal is now very expensive to use but doesn t even work properly I gave all the details for the type of application I was making and it told me what forms I needed to complete It missed two essential forms and my application was invalid This is just basic stuff and should be the very least the portal service offers it adds even more delay to a local authority planning service that is barely functioning as it it