Wrexham Council Planning Portal set for upgrade in early 2024

Wrexham Council’s planning portal is set for an upgrade early in 2024.

The performance of the current system was back in focus after councillors were told that the traditional list of delegated decisions made by the planning department would no longer be compiled and circulated.

Many development applications are small-scale, non-controversial proposals that can be processed quickly by council officers under delegated powers.

However ,ajor developments or plans which receive a certain number of objections come before the committee – or any that involve senior council officers.

As was reported last month the move to ‘suspend’ the lists provoked a debate in committee, with the blame being put on budget cuts.

The Civica system located at planning.wrexham.gov.uk/planning is notoriously slow and can display oddly in some browsers.

With planning applications sometimes requiring tens of megabytes of PDF’s the site also appears to throttle download speeds meaning looking at an entire proposal, or even a single document, can become a long, drawn-out affair.

The search system can also be hit and miss.

We asked Wrexham Council about the planning site due to the extra reliance on it by public and councillors, and if they were aware of issues.

We also questioned if the council thought the current system was fine.

A spokesperson for Wrexham Council said: “We are in the process of procuring a new Planning ICT system and this is expected to deliver improvements to the Planning Portal and accessibility to Planning applications.

“We are expecting this to go live during the first quarter of 2024.”

Councillors don’t appear to have yet have input to the new system, with one telling us of their upset on the removal of planning decision lists, and a desire for improved digital reporting and monitoring for what is due before planning and the outcomes.

Picture: Wrexham Council’s Planning Portal