We're wrapping up another year for the MHCLG Digital Planning Programme – and what a year it’s been. Our journey to transform England's planning system has continued with new partnerships, innovations and momentum, building on foundations laid over recent years. Everything we do is aimed at giving our communities a planning system that is data-driven, more efficient and accessible, and supporting the government’s mission to deliver 1.5 million homes this Parliament. Huge thanks to the incredible network of Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) and partners in Open Digital Planning (ODP), the wider planning community, other government departments and colleagues at MHCLG. Your collaboration has been integral to our progress. This isn't about technology for technology's sake. It's about empowering the people and organisations that make planning happen every day. We've organised this year's highlights around the different groups we've worked to support – local authorities and tech companies, developers and the public. ## **Supporting Local Planning Authorities** Planning and digital professionals in local authorities are at the heart of what we do. We’re equipping them with the technology and support they need to make digital transformation business as usual. ### **Open Digital Planning  – sector-led improvement** ODP is our cross-sector transformation network, bringing together almost 200 forward-thinking councils to share best practice, increase data availability, adopt modern planning services and strengthen digital capabilities. Together ODP is creating a more efficient, data-driven and transparent planning system to better serve communities. A highlight was the recent event hosted by Medway Council, when more than 170 attendees from 57 councils gathered to share progress and insights. The Open Digital Planning community at the event in Medway ### **Supporting plan-making** Planning authorities have told us they need clearer guidance, consistency and more practical tools to speed up plan-making. In February we published a new dedicated home for plan-making resources on GOV.UK. ‘Create or update a local plan’ now acts as a central hub bringing together user-tested guidance and templates in one place. Last month we added to the content by publishing the first release of draft guidance for the new plan-making system. This guidance will grow into a trusted resource for planners across England, providing clarity and support on critical areas including site selection, consultation, evidence production and how to structure and present a local plan to make it clear and accessible for everyone. Early testing is already showing the impact – 83% of users told us the guidance gave them greater confidence in meeting Planning Inspectorate expectations, which is exactly what we set out to achieve. ### **Making  planning data consistent and accessible ** The Digital Planning Improvement Fund now supports 122 LPAs to publish data to the Planning Data platform – 70 of these joined this year. Through the fund and dedicated support, participating authorities join ODP and are accelerating the pace at which they publish their data, enabling data-driven decisions and accessible information. New authorities begin their journey with the Digital Planning Maturity Assessment – a tool that helps council teams understand their digital strengths and areas to improve. We're increasingly seeing LPAs return to repeat the exercise and track their progress. ### **Using  artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up data creation** Extract – the AI tool we’re developing with the Department for Science, Technology and Innovation’s (DSIT), Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (iAI) – was chosen to be part of the Prime Minister's AI Exemplar programme. It will help councils to digitise their planning maps and documents in minutes rather than hours – speeding up the time it takes to make consistent planning data and publish it openly to help make planning decisions and create local plans. 5 councils are now alpha testing the tool, with more to join private beta testing in the new year. Better access to high-quality data will help developers and councils realise the housing potential of land and make England's planning system more transparent. Extract identifying ground control points to georeference an old map. Image created using OpenStreetMaps. ### **Developing a spatial approach to infrastructure planning with better data and tools** We are developing the ALIGN spatial tool (government's national infrastructure spatial tool), in collaboration with the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, so that local and central government will have a consistent way to test how policies, strategies and decisions interact spatially with infrastructure and to understand spatial trade-offs. A single digital platform it brings together strategies, data and tools, including AI, to identify local infrastructure needs and constraints for housing, industrial growth and land use scenarios. It is already supporting the government's growth agenda and place-based investment decisions, the 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy and aims to support Spatial Development Strategies. ### **Proving the impact of  modern planning software** Once their data is digitised, LPAs can adopt modern digital planning software to process applications more efficiently, using products such as PlanX – now live in 16 LPAs and the Back Office Planning System (BOPS) – with live pilots in 4 LPAs. These tools have been developed 'by planners, for planners'. This year, Medway Council, London Borough of Camden, London Borough of Barnet and London Borough of Lambeth have been involved in end-to-end pilots collecting valuable monitoring data to evaluate these ODP products. Results show significant efficiency gains – 40% time savings when validating and assessing householder applications. In Lambeth this translates to 35 minutes saved per application. ### **Solving real problems together** The 2-day Local Government Innovation Hackathon in Leeds, organised in partnership with Government Digital Service (GDS) and i.AI, brought together 150 planners, technologists and digital leaders, to tackle real-world planning challenges. Winning teams demonstrated their tools to Feryal Clark MP, when she was Minister for AI and Digital Government and have worked with i.AI engineers to discuss routes to scale their ideas. Teams collaborating at the hackathon ### **Making digital tools easier to adopt   ** Only 17% of LPAs believe they have the skills and knowledge to identify the right available digital planning tools. To address this, we seed-funded and launched the Digital Planning Directory, with the Digital Task Force for Planning, bringing all the digital planning suppliers together in one place. It now lists 121 digital service providers and has reached 36,000 users. Over the course of the year, the Directory has also organised a series of 'must see' online show and tells with LPAs demonstrating what's possible – all available to watch back. Dr Wei Yang OBE, CEO Digital Task Force for Planning at the launch of the Directory. Through our engagement with LPAs and suppliers and recent roundtables organised as part of our PropTech Growth programme, with the UK PropTech Association (UKPA), we know that procurement is a significant hurdle for adopting new technology. Last month the Directory launched a Procurement Resource Hub, and a benefits calculator based on the results from our innovation pilots, helping authorities make the business case and accelerate the adoption of digital planning tools. We’ve published some case studies showing the art of the possible  from Round 4 of the PropTech Innovation Fund: * East Hertfordshire District Council cut the call for sites processing time by 60% * North Tyneside saved 50% of staff time on consultation analysis with digital tools while boosting diverse engagement. * Greater Cambridge achieved 50% time savings on site assessment. Following on from Round 4, 22 LPAs are completing work on 12 pilots – demonstrating scalable solutions that can unlock sites and speed up plan-making processes. We’ll soon be receiving their practical implementation guides which we’ll share, providing authorities with another resource to help them confidently adopt innovative technology. ## **Supporting technology  companies** ### **Supporting property technology sector growth** Our commissioned Opportunity for PropTech report, published by the UK PropTech Association (UKPA) and PUBLIC earlier this year, shows the sector has the potential to grow by 20% by 2032 and generate revenue of approximately £72bn. To support this growth, we have evolved our approach with a series of partnerships, working with the Digital Task Force for Planning on the Digital Planning Directory, Geovation (part of Ordnance Survey), and the UKPA, to improve underlying market conditions. ### **Creating  open, standardised planning data** Technology companies need reliable, standardised planning data to build services that modernise planning. Our research however reveals critical barriers with inconsistent data standards and excessive time spent scraping and cleaning data. As one start-up told us, they want to spend time "working with the data, not trying to make the data work". Our Planning Data platform is addressing this, with at least 5 companies starting to use the platform’s data this year. It now hosts more than 400 datasets from England's LPAs, attracting 1.2 million weekly visitors and 20 million monthly hits – 4 times greater than this time last year. Richard Pope, author of Platformland, has highlighted the platform as an exemplar for UK government digital transformation – a 'template' to create better digital services and unlock private sector innovation. The platform’s open, standardised data is driving the development of modern planning software and supporting authorities with their local plan monitoring and delivery. We have also made significant progress on a data standard for planning application submissions and decisions, working with stakeholders in a data standards community. This will enable all LPAs to record and share information about planning applications consistently, providing a national picture of development. We’ve been testing the emerging data standards with established software suppliers. Technology companies will be able to use this standard to build new tools and scale them nationally. ## **Supporting developers  ** ### **Reducing planning costs  and overcoming key challenges** Many of our interventions directly support developers and other planning applicants. Better planning data helps to reduce the costs of bringing forward development by making information about site constraints available so they can identify sites and assess viability faster. Developers are also key partners in the PropTech Innovation Challenge, which we’re delivering with Geovation and aims to unlock housing delivery at scale. With £1.2 million of funding, 12 technology companies are working on pilots with developer and local authority partners addressing systemic barriers – including small site viability, access to land data, and infrastructure certainty. The pilots are due to present their impact in February 2026. Innovators from the 12 selected PropTech Innovation Challenge pilots at the September launch event. ### **Helping planning services to respond quickly and efficiently** One of the areas PlanX is transforming services is how councils handle pre-application advice. Doncaster Council pioneered a digital service that allows planners to specify required information upfront and ensures requests include relevant policy considerations from the start. The results show pre-application validation time reduced to less than half a day and the valid-to-decision period cut from 50 days to 29 days. These improvements mean developers receive faster, more useful feedback while officers can focus on providing quality advice. ## **Supporting public involvement in planning** Making planning more accessible to residents, businesses and community organisations remains a key focus area. ### **Making planning guidance accessible** The user-friendly PlanX interface asks simple questions and uses data to automatically generate planning guidance in minutes, helping people understand if they need planning permission, report planning breaches or submit applications. The content management system makes planning data and processes work better for planners and the public. ### **Improving public consultation and engagement through property technology** Our PropTech Innovation Fund has supported several pilots that are revolutionising how LPAs engage with residents in planning consultations.  A series of user-centred case studies have been published on GOV.UK as part of our plan-making guidance to demonstrate how councils have used digital tools to make local plan consultations more efficient and accessible. Greater Cambridge Shared Planning has partnered with the University of Liverpool to develop a bespoke AI model that summarised planning consultation comments across three supplementary planning document consultations in just 16 minutes – a task that took 18.5 hours previously. Officers still review every representation but can now focus on analysing the feedback and stakeholder engagement, creating faster feedback loops with communities. These innovations demonstrate how digital tools can make planning more inclusive and responsive, enabling residents to participate more easily on development plans that affect their areas. ## **Sharing our work and learning  with the planning sector** We've shared our progress at major industry events throughout the year. At the UK’s Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum (UKREiiF) in May, we presented alongside Nottingham City Council and City of London Corporation, showcasing their work on digital planning and supported an engaging session in the UKPA PropTech Hub featuring live demos from suppliers in the Digital Planning Directory. Milan Bogunovic, Digital Planning Programme Director, speaking at the UK’s Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum. We demonstrated Extract, at the Tech for Growth event in Paris, showing how the UK is harnessing AI to improve public services and presented at events with the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Planning Officers Society, encouraging more LPAs to embrace digital transformation. Our collaborative approach with LPAs in ODP has been recognised through shortlisting at both the Local Government Chronicle Awards (LGC) 2025 and the Digital Technology Leaders Awards 2025. While we didn't win, the LGC judges commended our "highly innovative partnership between national government and local planning authorities" and highlighted "the value of MHCLG seeding sector-led improvement in authorities". ## **Building momentum in 2025** This year has demonstrated what's possible when we work collaboratively across the planning sector. From councils publishing standardised data and adopting modern software, to technology companies building innovative solutions we're seeing the building blocks of a transformed planning system coming together. And with almost 200 councils now part of ODP, growing momentum in data standardisation, and AI tools like Extract set to launch widely next year, we're on track to deliver the efficient, transparent and accessible planning system that England needs to meet its ambitious housing targets. > We're looking for more research volunteers from across the sector. If you want to help shape our work, register to take part in our research sessions. > > For more information about the Digital Planning programme follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected, and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.

The Funding Service is a multidisciplinary team in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) transforming the way the department delivers grants to councils and communities. It has already achieved a lot in its mission to make grant delivery more cost-effective, consistent and user-focused. As 2025 draws to a close, the Funding Service is at a turning point. Over the past few years, our focus has been on responding to user feedback for the products we had already built and, more recently, on the critical task of creating a new digital service that could scale. The general election, change of government and spending review created a great deal of change in grant funding policy, including periods of uncertainty and lower-than-expected demand for the service. This meant we sometimes had a very small number of active users, and it could be hard to judge what was a must-have for multiple users and should be prioritised, versus a nice-to-have for a single user. Now we have a larger and more diverse group of users, our focus is prioritising based on analysed research and user needs, rather than nice-to-haves, to avoid creating an overly bespoke and technically unstable service. We’ve matured as a service and as a team, too. We’ve improved our ways of working by consolidating agile and user-centred design best practices. We've created an Insights Library to help us organise and prioritise user insights at each point of the journey. This sets us off on the right foot to solve a whole problem for users, end-to-end, and look at opportunities to integrate, either side of our current products. ## Our guiding values We’ve agreed on 6 values to help us prioritise and address the biggest pain points affecting the biggest number of users first. ### **1. Go  wide, not deep** We start by doing the essentials for each part of the grant lifecycle, then move quickly to cover the whole journey. We won’t go feature-heavy on any single stage until we’ve created a minimum viable product (MVP). Alongside building services, our focus will be on integrating with tools that already exist. If they don’t meet our users’ needs, we need to be clear about why that is and what we will build instead. ### **2. Integrate,  integrate, integrate** We need to connect MHCLG and non-MHCLG products so that users don't feel the seams between services or have to enter the same data twice. That means using high-quality reference data wherever it exists and avoiding redundant or inconsistent copies. Good integration isn’t just about technology; it’s about making the whole journey feel smooth (more on this below!). ### **3.  Design for the seams** We know users move between multiple services. Our job is to make those transitions easier to navigate for users. That means gathering insight about the whole journey, not just the products we’ve built. As Richard Pope puts it in his book Platformland, designing for the seams gives us “a way of revealing decisions, rules, data and accountability to users while not abandoning the aspiration for simplicity”. ### **4. Prioritise based on multiple user needs** We need to identify the top priority based on user needs, deliver it quickly to the agreed standard, and then move on. This approach helps us avoid spreading ourselves too thin and means we’re creating value where it's needed most. To support this, we’re embedding new feedback loops into our process: synthesised feedback and user research findings feed into an Insights Library, which informs product prioritisation. By taking this evidence-based approach, we can make more informed decisions and deliver meaningful improvements faster. ### **5. Release new things fast** We’ll release quickly, get real feedback, and iterate. It’s better to launch something useful now than wait for perfect later. ### **6. Be ready for policy changes** Our team and our products need to be flexible and ready to quickly adapt to changes in policy. ## Identifying integration opportunities and joining up Policy teams delivering grants and grant recipients currently need to engage with several teams and services both within MHCLG and in wider government during the funding lifecycle. This may include: * Government Grants Information System (GGIS) * Common Data Platform * Find a grant * Apply for a grant * Access grant funding * Delta This can lead to a disjointed, time consuming, and often confusing experience for users (and for our team working with grants, too). The Funding Service journey and related digital services Our ambition for 2026 into 2027 is an** ** end-to-end user journey that feels friction-free for the user. Over the next few months, we'll be exploring the processes, policies and teams which underpin these products to ensure there is a good link-up to support the user experience. ## Our work in the new year and beyond A new year brings new challenges, but also opportunities! We know our plan is ambitious, which is why we’ve already started. Our Service Insights team have been busy: * reviewing the end-to-end service maps, synthesising what we know and highlighting what we don’t​ * framing the main problems and pain points using existing user research and identifying assumptions​ The team is now working on: * understanding related work by other digital teams that could impact on the funding lifecycle * exploring the opportunities – this may include service or tool integration, or process improvements * scoring opportunities based on user need, desirability, feasibility and viability * producing opportunity assessments, outlining size, scope, and potential impact * playing back opportunity assessments and recommendations to the senior leadership team and product teams ## How to get involved We can’t do this alone, which is why we’ll be working closely with teams across MHCLG and wider government. We plan to engage with teams working on products our users may interact with to see how we can integrate and avoid duplication. Whether you’re in MHCLG or another department, please get in touch to learn more about our work at [email protected]. Find out more about the objectives and principles that guide our work in digital.

The System Design team at the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) includes designers, researchers and analysts. We bring user-centred design and systems thinking skills to complex building safety challenges. We work with policy teams on a range of projects, applying strategic systems thinking. Earlier this year, we completed a project to understand the housing safety and quality system and provide a shared view of that complex system to better inform policy development and decision making. You can see the outputs of this work in our most recent blog post. This work highlighted knowledge gaps and laid the foundations for our next project. ## The ask In June, we supported the development of policy thinking about the future of how the built environment is regulated. This was informed by the recommendations set out in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s Phase 2 Report. We were asked to build evidence for what residents might need from a new regulator. We did in-depth qualitative user research to understand residents' experiences and needs around housing safety, quality and its regulation. The research looked at how residents access support and view the role of regulators, how much trust they have in the system and the role consumer power plays in how they make decisions. You can read the full report from this research in our GitHub repository. Housing is a fundamental need. It affects everything – from education and work to relationships and community life. When housing is unsafe or poor quality, it can seriously harm people’s lives. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a simple model explaining what people generally need to live well and feel fulfilled. It illustrates how important it is to have basic needs met. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs ## Where we started Before starting user research with residents, we reviewed what we already knew. That involved secondary research, stakeholder interviews, and conversations with internal policy teams. Then we did 40 in-depth user research interviews. We spoke to residents across England, from different backgrounds and housing situations. In each session, we asked questions about housing safety, quality and what residents expect when asking for help. ## What we learnt Residents think about safety and quality in many ways. From how secure they feel to the materials used in their homes. But they don’t always feel confident prioritising or assessing these things when choosing a place to live. How residents raise issues depends on their housing type, how confident they feel and their socio-economic background. But many face the same problem: it’s hard to find someone who’s responsible and willing to help. Most people don’t escalate problems beyond their landlord or housing provider. This is often because they’ve had bad experiences in the past or don’t know how to get help. Residents in unstable housing, with a disability or who speak English as a second language face even more barriers. Many don’t believe they’ll be listened to or that anything will change. ### Trust is fragile Trust in housing is easily broken – and hard to rebuild. Many residents told us they don’t trust people involved in housing. This included government bodies, and ranged from landlords to contractors because of past failures and poor experiences. We found that, to rebuild trust in an organisation, two types of trust are needed: * **Social trust** : believing someone has good intentions * **Cognitive trust** : believing someone is competent and reliable, based on evidence and experience Residents’ faith in those responsible for safety and quality of their homes is currently low due to poor experiences and past failings. Residents feel that many organisations put profit over quality and safety, and that little is done to hold bad actors to account. Residents expect regulators to make sure safety and quality standards are met and to hold others to account. But they need to see evidence that regulators are doing this. It is possible to build trust within the housing system. Community groups and Citizens Advice were often mentioned as trusted organisations. Residents trust these organisations because they put residents’ wellbeing first and follow through on promises. ### Regulation needs to work for residents Residents don’t expect to have direct contact with regulators, if others like landlords or agents are doing their jobs properly. Instead, they expect that people and processes are regulated so that they work first time. And that if things go wrong, they can be resolved with those responsible. The research we’ve done is being used to help shape the policies and design of the new regulator being introduced by MHCLG to meet one of the recommendations set out in the Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 Report. The Inquiry's report describes that the recommendation intends to consolidate how the sector is regulated and drive culture change in the industry. Ultimately this will deliver better outcomes for residents. MHCLG is clear that the new regulator must protect residents by making sure the buildings residents live in are safe, and the wider housing system must support the regulator to do this. ## Want to learn more or get involved? If you’d like to learn more about how we are applying system design to building safety challenges, you can access our maps and reports on our GitHub repository. You can sign up to take part in future user research sessions. For more information, contact us at: [email protected].

Local plans are the backbone of England’s planning system, shaping how places grow and develop. But the current system isn’t working as we need it to. Many plans take over 7 years to produce and cost councils millions of pounds, putting pressure on local resources and delaying the delivery of homes and infrastructure local communities need. ## **A new approach to plan-making** Earlier this year, the government gave an update on the steps being taken to achieve universal coverage of local plans and realise the full potential of planning reforms initiated in 2024. On 27 November, Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook confirmed details of a new plan-making system in a Written Ministerial Statement. The Minister outlined how the reforms will make it easier for councils to shape development in their area and play their part in delivering the government’s target of 1.5 million homes. The new local plan regulations underpinning the new approach to plan-making will come into force early next year, establishing a faster system with shorter and clearer local plans that communities and the development sector can rely on. At the heart of this reform is a new 30-month timeline for creating and adopting local plans, supporting the government’s commitment to achieving universal local plan coverage. Diagram illustrating the 30-month plan-making process. Find out more about the timeline and the details of each step. ## **Supporting the new plan-making system** MHCLG’s Digital Planning programme and Development Plans team, in collaboration with the Planning Inspectorate, have been working to address the pain points and inefficiencies within plan-making to help deliver a simpler, faster and more accessible new system of local plans. In February 2025 we published a new dedicated home of resources on GOV.UK - Create or update a local plan, bringing together guidance to provide greater clarity, consistency and certainty to the plan-making process. We’ve now added, in draft, the first tranche of detailed draft guidance to help authorities preparing plans under the new system get started as soon as possible. We have prioritised resources for the earliest stages of plan-making so local planning authorities can understand how the new system will work and what they can do now to prepare. ## **Developed with users at its heart** What makes this planning guidance different is how we've developed it – with the primary users, the plan-makers. We’ve developed every piece directly with local planning authorities and planning inspectors. The intensive, iterative testing has shaped the content, structure and tools to ensure they work in practice and not just in theory. > “It has been a pleasure to be asked to contribute to the work in shaping the new plan-making process.  MHCLG has shown a clear interest in understanding how experienced practitioners working on the ground expect the new system and guidance to operate in practice as part of a large-scale data-gathering exercise.” **Phil Hylton, Central Lincolnshire Local Plans Manager  ** This user-centred approach is reflected in the practical tools we've created. It sets out how local councils are expected to prepare their local plan and provides practical resources to support preparation. For Gateway 1 – the first of a series of checkpoints designed to help local councils to stay on track to deliver plans within 30 months – we have developed ready-to-use templates including the Gateway 1 summary template, to remove guesswork from critical stages. Our site selection guidance walks planners through identification, assessment and allocation with step-by-step clarity. These are working tools shaped by the people who will use them every day. The result is a fundamental shift towards making local planning work for everyone involved. Councils get the clarity and tools they need to deliver efficiently. Communities get plans faster that respond to their current needs. And nationally we can move more quickly to achieving full plan coverage across England, critical to unlocking the types of development our country needs. We're enormously grateful to all the local authority officers who generously volunteered their time and expertise over the many months of testing. ## **Learning from authorities using digital tools** Local planning authorities are already discovering the potential of technology and digital tools to transform plan-making. Case studies showing how councils have used innovative tools as part of the PropTech Innovation Fund to speed up local plan creation are currently available and signposted to on Local Digital, with user-centred versions soon to be published on Create or update a local plan. These real-world examples illustrate the practical benefits and efficiency gains possible. ## **Next steps** We will review the guidance and make any necessary revisions and updates as the new system is implemented, and related regulations and policy are confirmed. These resources form part of a growing digital offer to support plan makers to deliver local plans faster. It will be followed by the timely release of tools and services both next year and beyond. As local planning authorities start using these resources, we'll also be reviewing and refining the guidance based on real experience. We're actively seeking feedback from plan-makers as they work with the new system. Each guidance page includes instructions on how to share their thoughts, suggestions and questions. This feedback will help us iterate the guidance to better support users through this transition and ensure it meets the practical needs of those using it every day. ## **Get involved** As we've explored in this post, our research volunteers are at the heart of how the Digital Planning programme is transforming planning for the 21st century. We're looking for volunteers from across the planning and development sector to take part in research sessions. Whether you're a planning officer, developer, landowner, planning consultant or technology vendor, your insights will directly shape our work. Register your interest to take part. > Keep up to date with the Digital Planning programme by following the programme on LinkedIn and subscribing to the newsletter.

Every year, International Volunteer Day highlights the important role volunteering plays in strengthening communities and supporting positive change. In this post, 3 of our colleagues reflect on their volunteering experience: what motivates them, how their contributions support the people and places around them, and how it connects to their professional values. ## Jaimella Espley, Senior Delivery Manager, Common Tools I’m a senior delivery manager working across programmes in the Common Tools team. We build reusable tools for the department, helping teams be more efficient. I’m a volunteer bird surveyor for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), National Trust and Derbyshire Wildlife Trust. Living in the Peak District National Park, I monitor sites close to my home. I do regular counts of wetland birds, breeding birds and rare upland species such as curlew, lapwing and snipe. The data generated helps map long-term population trends and inform conservation strategies. I believe spending time in nature and watching birds supports all the 5 ways of wellbeing, helping us connect, learn and grow. I love being able to play a tiny part in helping preserve local species and wild places for future generations. Learning to identify a bird in flight by a song or call is an intellectual challenge. Learning to make nest boxes takes me out of my comfort zone. Getting up in the dark can sometimes be a struggle. It’s always worthwhile, when I hear the dawn chorus start in an ancient woodland or a curlew calling as the sun rises over the moorland. ## Gideon Goldberg, Lead Developer, Funding Service I’m currently a lead developer working on the Funding Service; you can find out more about what I do and my experience in my role in this blog post. I volunteer with the careers education charity Inspire. Their mission is to inspire children and young people across London and beyond through encounters with employers. Most recently I took part in their ‘Pathways to Professionalism’ day. It was great to be able to share my professional experience, especially with a diverse group of girls at Plashet School in Newham (one of the most deprived boroughs in London according to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's (MHCLG’s) own data). Anything we can do to inspire these students to improve their social mobility is doubly valuable. The Year 7 students were incredibly engaged, always putting their hands up and got fully involved with the varied activities we facilitated throughout the day. It was particularly rewarding when I asked the students if they knew what a civil servant was (a question that usually gets a stunned silence) and one girl responded her sister was a civil servant and that she had a cool job! I’ll let the students have the last word with their feedback on what they learned during the day: > “That everything is useful and will help you in one way or another” > > “How to write an email and to pay attention to details” > > “You should always be resilient and never be afraid to ask for help.” > > “There are many paths for you in life.” > > “When I get my job, I need to dress smart casual.” > > “To talk to new people” > > “To always be resilient and never give up” ## Emma Crowe, Head of Communications, Digital Planning I work in the Digital Planning team at MHCLG, focused on transforming England’s planning system to enable more homes to be built for our communities. For almost 3 years I’ve been volunteering with GoodGym, a nationwide community that helps you get fit by doing good. We’re runners, walkers and cyclists, who combine regular exercise with making a difference in our communities. I’m a member of my local group in Kingston upon Thames. My family now know Tuesday is my Group GoodGym night when we run 2.5km to a task, spend an hour doing a good deed, then run back to our meeting place. It's far better than spending an hour in the gym in my opinion! What motivates me is simple: I get to meet local people of all ages and backgrounds, work on a range of rewarding tasks helping my local community whilst getting fit. The variety of tasks never ceases to amaze me. Recently, we've completed a deep clean of Kingston Foodbank, cleaned graffiti near a community centre, helped move planters and sheds for a community garden, and created seasonal window displays for the British Heart Foundation! We've also cleaned bikes for Full Cycle, a community bike project which supplies refurbished bikes to refugees and those on low incomes. One of my favourite tasks took place this week – putting up Christmas decorations at a supported living home for young people. Many hands really do make light work – it’s incredible what a small group of us can achieve in an hour. As a civil servant, volunteering where I live with a charity like GoodGym connects directly to my professional values. I see firsthand how local initiatives strengthen communities and how small contributions create real impact. Here in the MHCLG and the Civil Service, we believe in making a positive impact beyond the workplace among the communities we serve. That's why civil servants in MHCLG get up to 6 days of fully paid volunteering leave per year. Find out more about what it’s like to work in Digital in MHCLG.

The System Design team at the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) includes designers, researchers and analysts. We bring user-centred design and systems thinking skills to complex building safety challenges. Our work involves doing projects with policy teams and strategic systems thinking. Where we live has a huge impact on our lives. The safety, quality and sustainability of our homes is part of a vast and complex system. Our first big job as a new team was to help make sense of that system, and support others in the department to have a shared view of that complexity to better inform policy development and decision making. ## What we did Example of our high-level mapping of the roles involved in the housing safety and quality system. You can access and explore the full map in our GitHub repository. At the end of 2024, we were asked to visualise and research how the housing safety and quality system is working in practice. Our first step was to gain a base understanding of the people in the system, their roles and responsibilities, and what policies say should be happening. When we say ‘people in the system’, that includes everyone from regulators, to people working in construction, those providing insurance and finance, and of course residents. We then did primary research with people working in the system to understand their behaviours, relationships and experiences. We used our research to map how different parts of the system interact, understand how people experience the system, and identify levers for change. We turned our research into tools and reports to ensure our policy colleagues can easily access insights to make decisions and develop policies for the future. Visit our GitHub repository to view the resources resulting from our research. ## What we learnt ### **Regulatory complexity is currently difficult to navigate** Example of our mapping of who regulates the system. You can access a copy of this map in our GitHub repository. When mapping the different organisations and activities involved in regulating and setting standards within the system, we found over 75 organisations from government regulators to private standard setting organisations. Those organisations enforce and work to over 70 pieces of legislation. The people who design, build and maintain every home need to navigate that complexity. Depending on their role, professionals might also work to professional standards as well. We heard that complexity and ambiguity in regulations has left some people unsure of their roles, responsibilities and expectations of others, even where they understand and agree with a policy's underlying aims. All of the insights, reports and maps from our work support policymakers to consider the whole regulatory landscape when they’re designing and bringing in changes. ### **Role-based profiles help identify impacts beyond the surface** Examples of profiles based on what we heard during our research in the voice of those we spoke to. You can access this information in our GitHub repository. We heard about issues relating to recruiting, training and retaining skilled staff across key roles. There are many systemic root causes for these issues, which we are looking to explore further. In particular, local and national regulators reported capacity and capability struggles which can impact regulation  enforcement activity, proactive work and the ability to build trust between teams. We created role-based profiles to help policy and delivery teams think about the changes they are making to the system, and how it impacts different roles. They also help policy teams to think about the cumulative impact of changes in the system, and how this adds up over time. ## People are always at the heart of the system People are always at the heart of the system. Housing quality and safety impacts residents the most, but they often have the least influence within the system. Vulnerable residents can be worried about and experience more barriers when accessing support. Concern about and perception of risk also impact how people – from regulators to residents – make decisions across the system. It’s people who ultimately shape activity in the system. Their actions will be shaped by policies and services, but also by their own experiences. So, we need to design with people's emotions, relationships and perceptions in mind. That’s why our team is bringing user-centred research and system design into policy processes. We want to ensure that the experiences of those most affected by changes are considered when designing policy, and that the people at the heart of the system are being supported. ## Learn more If you want to learn more, you can access versions of our maps and reports on our GitHub repository. This includes: * our final report and user research report * profiles that give a snapshot of the behaviours, needs and context of different people working in the system * maps that show the landscape of how the system is regulated * maps that show the different places people live, and the different roles involved in managing some of those places * maps that show what influences whether buildings are maintained well * a map that gives you a summary of people in the system If you’d like to get involved in our research, or hear more about our work, you can sign up to take part in our user research sessions or email us at [email protected].

Faster and more efficient planning relies on open, accessible and trustworthy planning data. But data alone is not enough. Councils, planning applicants and the software providers supporting both in our planning system, need an agreed standard for how the information they exchange can be structured. This will help improve certainty for all parties and enable modern, digital systems to talk to each other and empower better decision making. Data standards are emerging through the Digital Planning programme’s work with the data standards community. Significant progress has been made on planning application submissions, with draft specifications now at pilot stage and work is beginning on standardising how decisions are recorded. But how will these specifications work with core planning software systems used by local authorities? What will development management services look like once these standards are introduced? And what support might technology companies need to prepare for the transition and plan for wide customer rollout? To answer these questions, we’re funding 5 pilot projects representing the main back-office planning systems used by local planning authorities across England to process planning applications. ## **The pilot partnerships** All projects are led by local planning authorities, who understand the importance of modernising digital planning services to better serve their communities, each paired with a key software supplier: * Dorset Council, working with DEF * Leeds City Council, working with Idox * London Borough of Hounslow, working with NEC * London Borough of Redbridge, working with IEG4 * Salford City Council, working with Arcus Global These partnerships cover a range of locations and system types, to give us broad insight into how the standards will perform in different contexts. The Planning Portal is also participating in this work. Updates will be shared widely including with the with data standards community. This work is critical to help the standards mature from design discussions to real life applications. ## **A phased approach** The 5 pilots have structured the work into 3 phases: analysis, testing and preparation for transition. During the analysis phase, the aim is to assess the impact of proposed specifications on current technology and processes. As part of this, the project teams are working together to identify potential challenges and explore how these might be addressed in collaboration with the data standards community. We want to make the entire planning application and permission process data rich through standardisation. We are identifying the minimum viable set of standards needed to create a data-rich ecosystem without disrupting existing processes. In the testing phase suppliers and planning teams will see proposed changes materialise and build the evidence and knowledge needed that other Local Planning Authorities can learn from to upgrade their own planning software and IT systems in future. The final phase of these projects, expected in early 2026, will see the projects consolidate these learnings so they can be made accessible to all. Software suppliers will also use what they’ve learned to plan support for their customer base. ## **Preparing for data standards adoption** The work we’re doing now is helping the industry prepare for changes needed to comply with emerging data standards due to be introduced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. This work will make it easier for planning officers to access consistent, high-quality information, and for applicants and communities to see clearer, more transparent decisions. Over time, open and standardised data will support more modular, interoperable and responsive planning services. Active participation by different parties in community discussions has made a significant contribution. When government and stakeholders work towards a common goal, it becomes far more achievable. ## **Get involved** Join the data standards community if you want to help shape the planning applications data specifications. You can sign up and find information, updates and relevant links about this work on the planning applications submissions project homepage. > Keep up to date with the Digital Planning programme by  following the programme on LinkedIn and subscribing to the newsletter. > > The Digital Planning team is conducting user research to improve planning and its associated industries. We need volunteers from across the planning and development sector, including developers, landowners, planning consultants, planning officers and technology suppliers. Register your interest to take part.

The Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) rank over 33,000 small areas across the country by levels of deprivation. It’s one of the department’s most important and widely used datasets and Accredited Official Statistics – shaping policy, guiding funding and informing decisions from a wide range of users. It even influences individuals’ decisions, for example when they’re deciding where to live. Our goal was simple – to make this data, and the insights it holds, more accessible than ever. We set out to make it easier for everyone to find, use and understand deprivation data through our dedicated site. ## What we built After reviewing user needs, feedback from previous releases and input from stakeholders, we began shaping our designs. Through iteration and testing, we arrived at 3 core elements that would define the experience. * **Area summaries.** We know that not everyone is familiar with deprivation indices, so after a simple postcode search on the site, users are taken to a page all about their neighbourhood. We developed algorithms that translate the data into straightforward descriptions, supported by charts and maps, to help users understand what’s driving deprivation in a given area – whether it's crime, income, or other factors. * **Interactive maps.** To support exploration, we built maps that let users view spatial patterns across the country and to zoom right in on specific neighbourhoods. Users can select multiple areas to compare and quantify differences – useful for planning services or understanding local contexts. * **Flexible download options.** Research showed that many users just want to get their hands on the data – but needs varied. Some want the full dataset, others prefer specific extracts. So, we’ve created something that lets people get what suits their needs – whether it’s data about a specific set of postcodes, a local authority area, a specific domain of deprivation, or all of them. A quick demo of the explorer showing how users can enter a postcode and explore deprivation patterns in an area. We strived to make everything feel connected – an intuitive flow from one part of the site to the next. For example, if someone picks an area on the map, they’re then prompted to check out the summary for that spot. Our aim was to guide users, without making them think too hard. ## Designed to support democracy  It’s early days, but we’ve already begun to see the tool used in real-world settings, supporting democracy, debate and decision making, and hearing lots of anecdotes of how the service is being used. The tool is being adopted by a diverse range of users from local authorities, policymakers and community groups to researchers and the media using the insights to enhance their work or spark discussions in public forums. ## Performant and reusable tech This project marked a technical milestone for our team and the department, being the first time our Svelte component library powered a live project. You can read more detailed thinking about this in our blog post, but as a quick recap it means: **Server-side rendering, strong performance, excellent search engine optimisation (SEO)** : SvelteKit makes it easy for us to efficiently server-side render the many pages (one for each of the 33,755 neighbourhoods), meaning they’re quicker to load, more accessible, and can be more easily indexed by search engines. This approach allows us to avoid common pitfalls with large data-driven apps, such as slow calls to servers, heavy client-side number crunching (for example, based on the user's inputted postcode) and dynamic content which is difficult to index.__ The SEO benefits mean this content gets higher visibility in Google searches, helping more users get to the insights more quickly. **Built-in reactivity:** Svelte allows us to easily manage users' selections – it helps us serve personalised and localised content without repeatedly asking for selections, or without needing to write lots of complex code to save and track those selections. **High levels of customisation** : By building the component library from the ground up we have full control over the experience. This allows us to react to small user interaction improvements as a result of user feedback, and better meet accessibility requirements. These can be challenging to meet when working with dynamic and visual content. Beyond the Svelte component library, we’ve also been working hard to set up shared infrastructure to host this IMD project. Importantly, this is also reusable and is already being incorporated to support future projects. All of this means that, as a team and a department, we now have lots of the building blocks in place to deliver these types of projects and services more efficiently and effectively than ever before. So, from now on, users can expect faster, better and easier-to-access insights! ## We’d love your feedback This is all work in progress, and we’re keen to keep improving. If you’ve used the deprivation app, we’d love to hear what you think. Feedback, ideas, bug reports – all welcome. If you’re curious about the tech behind it, want to reuse parts of it, or fancy collaborating on the component library, we’d love that too. Drop us a line at [email protected]. If you’re interested in the full statistical release, it’s available online: English indices of deprivation 2025 - GOV.UK . The brilliant multi-disciplinary team behind this work includes: Andrew Hillman, Camilla Jones, Duncan Bradley, Glenn Herbert, Hayley Swain, Ibrahim Haizel, Miles Hinchliffe, Mike Lister, Navneet Dalton and Tim Kershaw.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is working with England's Mayoral Strategic Authorities (MSAs) to help ensure data drives effective devolution. We are bringing together local data leaders through the newly formed Mayoral Data Council (MDC) to influence national thinking and turn insight into impact for communities across England. ## Establishing the MDC The MDC met for the first time earlier this year. It was created following the English Devolution White Paper, recognising that data must be front and centre as powers shift from Whitehall to local communities. MSAs are uniquely placed to deliver locally tailored solutions, but to do so effectively, they need robust data, shared expertise and a strong collective voice. This is where the MDC comes in and makes a difference. As a council of senior data leaders from all mayoral areas, it can champion better data, improve data sharing and build capability across government layers. ## **The MDC in action** The MDC’s work falls into 3 areas: 1. Helping build skills in local government, share resources and learn from each other’s experiences. This includes exploring data and artificial intelligence (AI) maturity across local government, and creating stronger ties between different levels of government. 2. Representing local views in central decision-making as equal partners, while putting data front and centre in conversations about devolution. 3. Improving data sharing across central and local government – making sure MSAs have access to the data they need while protecting citizens' data and increasing collaboration with other government departments. The MDC regularly feeds the expert data view into senior forums like the Mayoral Council and Council of Nations and Regions, ensuring that data remains at the heart of devolution. With a 12-month plan and ways of working now established, the MDC is keen to start making a difference. ## The 12-month plan: ambition, collaboration and impact For its foundational year, the MDC is focused on high-value, high-impact priorities. By the end of 2026, the MDC aims to: * enable better use of data in MSAs through increased access to resources and shared learning * establish typologies and case studies to benchmark digital transformation and AI readiness * position local government as co-designers of cross-government solutions * improve data sharing at all levels of government And it’s not just about the data – it’s about people. The MDC wants senior leaders to become data champions, fostering a culture where evidence drives action. ## Why it's a game-changer for local government In an era where data drives everything from bin collections to economic development strategies, the MDC represents something genuinely innovative – a forum where local expertise informs national policy, and where the people delivering services have a voice in shaping the tools they need to succeed. For data professionals and local government workers, the MDC offers a glimpse of what collaborative government looks like when it's working at its best – ensuring devolution delivers real benefits for communities across England. ## **Get involved and find out more about the MDC** The MDC wants to hear from data professionals, local government workers and anyone curious about how AI and data can transform public services. Contact us at [email protected]. Look out for future updates about the work of the MDC on the MHCLG Digital blog.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is making a new Cyber Incident Response (CIR) service available to English councils, helping them to respond quickly and effectively to severe cyber incidents. This support is part of Local Digital’s Defend as One programme, which aims to help councils address collective cyber threats by encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing across local government, central government and beyond. ## About the CIR service This service provides access to a National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) assured provider at Enhanced Level, supporting councils during severe incidents. By offering this support, we aim to: * reduce the impact of attacks * speed up containment and recovery * help protect vital services and sensitive data We’re working towards a more unified and proactive approach to cyber resilience aligning with the ambitions set out in the Government Cyber Security Strategy. ### How the CIR service works The CIR service is available for severe cyber incidents with MHCLG assessing all activation requests and determining eligibility. If a cyber incident is severe enough to activate the CIR service, MHCLG will provide a council with: * funded CIR support for the containment and eradication stages of a qualifying incident * optional recovery support, delivered by the same supplier at an agreed rate funded by the council through our contract You can find full details of the CIR service and its available support on our guidance for councils using the service. We recommend familiarising yourself with the offer and incorporating it into your incident response plans where possible. The CIR service is not a substitute for the measures and preparation councils should have in place for cyber security incidents. Councils remain responsible for their own IT infrastructure and security. ## How to access the service during an incident In the event of a severe cyber incident affecting your council’s operations or critical services, you should report it to the NCSC through their reporting portal. You should also report incidents, where appropriate, to: * the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) * the National Crime Agency (NCA) or call 0300 123 2040 * your regional Warning Advice and Reporting Point (WARP) to support wider threat intelligence sharing within the sector NCSC will share reports promptly with MHCLG, who will monitor the reports on a 24/7 basis so we can assess whether the incident meets the threshold for activating the CIR service. If the incident does qualify, you will receive an email confirmation, and the CIR provider will contact you directly to begin support. ## We want your feedback We are committed to improving this service. If you have comments, questions or suggestions, please contact us at****[email protected]. Your feedback helps us refine and shape the service to better meet the needs of local government. Follow our channels for the latest updates and opportunities: * LinkedIn * X (formerly Twitter) * Local Digital Newsletter * MHCLG Digital blog * Local Digital website

Across England, local planning authorities use different formats to record the outcomes of planning applications. To unlock the full potential of this information and make critical details about what’s been approved and where more accessible, we’ve started work to standardise decision notices. This will help local authorities access the information they need instantly, supporting more effective planning and reporting for housing and infrastructure, while making this data available to others for analysis and forecasting. We’re driving forward these important improvements as part of our mission to standardise planning data across England. Now that our work to standardise the planning application submission stage is well underway and entering the testing phase, we've shifted our focus to the other end of the planning permission process: the decision stage. We recently concluded a round of user research with our data standards community to understand the challenges and requirements around standardising decision data. We're defining this as the official decision itself, plus all the supporting information and up-to-date conditions that exist at the point the decision is made. This is more than just ‘approve’ or ‘refuse’ information – it’s the final, accurate data on what's actually been approved. We have been receiving responses to our survey and following up with in-depth interviews with local authorities and planning consultants. Thank you to everyone who took the time to contribute – your feedback is invaluable. ## Why standardised decision data is critical Our research confirmed that crucial information is currently scattered across documents, submitted during the planning application process, making it incredibly difficult to use this data for analysis or forecasting. The research identified 5 core areas where standardised decision data is urgently needed: 1. **Monitoring and reporting:** Local, regional and central government need this data for statistical analysis. Having structured information is essential to measure the effectiveness of policies and understand how planning is shaping the country. 2. **Forecasting and resources:** The most accurate data on what is being built should be captured at the moment of decision. We know that changes to housing numbers can happen during the planning process but are locked away in documents, making it difficult for local authorities and infrastructure providers to forecast future infrastructure and resource needs. 3. **Statutory consultation:** Critical information, especially planning conditions, often needs to flow back to statutory consultees post-decision – organisations like the Environment Agency – that must be consulted with on certain applications. Standardising this data can ensure that it is correctly linked and flows through the entire system. 4. **Follow-up planning applications:** It is difficult to link applications efficiently and effectively, which can be hard to track backwards to an original application and subsequent applications, therefore making it difficult to understand how an approved development has changed and what will actually be delivered. 5. **Appeals and enforcement:** Handing off decisions to the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) for an appeal, or to an enforcement team, currently involves re-extracting information from documents and reports, because there is not consistent final documentation. Structuring this data will smooth and speed up the appeals process. ## The problems we need to solve Unlike the submission stage, where we had existing national application forms as a starting point, we face a fundamental challenge looking at the decision stage: there is no single, standardised format for decision notices. This lack of a baseline is compounded by several other issues: * **Locked-up data:** Time and again, we heard that critical geospatial information – like boundaries for Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) habitats or specific tree locations – is submitted as a PDF or other document. This forces local authority staff to spend time manually recreating this data for their own GIS (geographic information system) tools. The information is there, but it's inaccessible as useable data. * **Untracked changes:** During the application process, key details like building numbers, floor space or building classifications often change through negotiations or amendments. This final, updated information is usually only captured in the decision notes or documents, not as structured data. At the point of decision, we need to capture these final details to ensure accuracy for everyone who needs this information later. ## Community insights: Our focus areas When we asked the community what the priorities were for standardisation, their insights highlighted a number of key areas where we can make the biggest positive impact: * **Culture change:** As with any significant transformation, this was identified as a key focus area. The community emphasised that support will be needed to help bring people to work together to build new ways of working and sharing information – across teams, departments and organisations in the planning and development sector. This collaborative approach will be essential to achieve the collective adoption of the standards. * **Data lifecycle and legacy:** We were told that we must avoid short-term thinking. Planning decisions impact buildings that last for hundreds of years, so our standards must be robust enough to reflect the needs of all users for decades to come. Standardising historic data also presents a huge practical challenge and there is real cost associated with making these changes, which must be considered. * **Skills and training:** We can't introduce new data structures without understanding what help users may need to understand the new formats, what the new data is, where it comes from, how to work with it and the benefits of providing it. * **Opportunity to innovate:** There is a real concern that we simply digitise existing processes. The community expressed a real desire for us to actively use this opportunity to identify areas for innovation and improvements, and create a standard that can evolve as needs change over time. ## Next steps: Join the conversation This research confirms that the work ahead will require more than just technical fixes. It demands a serious effort to address cultural and process issues too. We will keep you updated on our progress. In the meantime, we need your continued help: * **Volunteer:** If you have deep experience with decision notices, planning conditions or the data requirements of a specific statutory consultee, please join the data standards community to get involved. * **Provide evidence:** Continue to test our pilot submission standards and provide us with evidence-based feedback. * **Check the backlog:** You can now see all our tasks, including the challenges identified in this research, on our public project board. > Keep up to date with the Digital Planning programme by following the programme on LinkedIn and subscribing to the newsletter. > The Digital Planning team is conducting user research to improve planning and its associated industries. We need volunteers from across the planning and development sector, including developers, landowners, planning consultants, planning officers and PropTech vendors. Register your interest to take part.

How do we embark on the journey of solving 3 fundamental problems holding back housing delivery in England? Several months ago, we challenged the PropTech sector to come up with scalable solutions to address land data accessibility, small site deliverability and infrastructure certainty. The response exceeded all our expectations. I discussed the overwhelming interest we had in a previous blog post. Now, following a series of in-depth judging days, 84 applications have been whittled down to 12 selected pilots which were launched at a celebration event at the end of September. These teams will now develop their innovations further, including real world testing with local authority and developer partners. We’re running the PropTech Innovation Challenge in collaboration with Geovation from Ordnance Survey. At the recent event I was thrilled to hear from each of the winning teams about their innovative solutions. The energy in the room was tangible, and it was clear the teams were eager to move from their pitch presentations to the implementation phase. Each team is receiving up to £100,000 and will work up until March 2026 to develop and test their innovations. ## **3 critical areas** The solutions each cover one of the 3 challenge areas we set out. One company is developing an innovative approach to make land ownership data more accessible and transparent. Five teams are exploring how they can offer greater certainty to developers with tools that provide reliable insights into essential infrastructure capacity. Meanwhile 6 companies are focused on unlocking small site delivery by reducing investment risks and improving viability assessments for smaller developments. You can find out more about the statements in another one of our previous blog posts and Geovation's Challenge research report. ## **Powerful collaboration** At the event what struck me most wasn't just the innovative ideas and sophistication of the technology on display, but the genuine collaboration between public and private sectors. I am delighted that these teams are embarking on their journeys of discovery alongside local government partners who are equally passionate about solving these problems. These partnerships represent something new – a shared commitment to solving complex problems together, through innovation, with the ultimate goal of delivering the 1.5 million homes our country needs. And that’s really what it all comes down to. And something we must keep front of mind. Having also chaired the recent Housing Design Awards, which culminated last month, I visited many schemes during the judging process and stood with people in their new homes. These visits are always powerful reminders of what a vital stepping stone a home is for people and just how important this work is. ## **The journey ahead** I’m looking forward to seeing how these 12 teams progress with their pilots and the advances they’ll have made by March 2026, which will hopefully lead to adoption and scaling across the housing sector. You can follow their progress and learn more about each solution on the PropTech Innovation Challenge website page. We’re planning to organise a show and tell in December. I also set the teams a challenge – to build open source solutions wherever possible and design out repeat costs. This way, we can maximise the number of people who benefit from these innovations. I have also asked them to consider how we can enable local authorities to leapfrog their current practice and what key messages I need to take back to policymakers to help make this happen. I am looking forward to seeing how they respond. > Keep up to date by viewing the PropTech Innovation Challenge webpage, following the Digital Planning programme on LinkedIn and subscribing to the newsletter.

At MHCLG, colleagues across the UK use the intranet daily for news, resources and guidance, such as HR or IT policies, and to access internal digital services. My first project on joining the department as a senior content designer in the Publishing team, was to produce a content audit of the existing intranet and make improvements based on the findings. This work supports our digital strategy objective to enhance operational excellence and drive organisational efficiency, helping colleagues to self-serve better by making internal digital services easier to use. It’s also part of the MHCLG Disability Action Plan – an internal policy focused on creating an inclusive working environment where all colleagues feel valued. ## Phase 1: Doing a content audit Our intranet is built on WordPress and had more than 5,000 live pages at the start of the audit. Impressions were mixed, with users struggling to find and use information. The search bar was inconsistent, and content was cluttered, presenting an opportunity to introduce good content governance. However, colleagues did consider the intranet a valuable resource they needed at work. The goal was to make it usable and accessible for everyone. During the audit, we analysed: * page types (such as guidance, news stories and blog posts) * number of pages * number of page views * user search terms * time spent on a page * readability grade (in line with the Hemingway App) * document accessibility, including PDFs, Word documents and PowerPoint decks * the extent to which the content met the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or the government Service Standard We noticed that some pages were out of date, duplicated, orphaned or not fully accessible. After an initial cull of pages that were redundant, we used analytics and WordPress metrics to identify the 100 most popular pages on the site. Our small team of content designers rewrote them to introduce a consistent structure, style and tone. As Lizzie Bruce writes in her book 'Task-based intranet content', “Generally, people want information about a specific thing, fast, when they visit the intranet. They need it in as little time as possible, so they can get on with their job, or enjoy their lunch break”. With this in mind, we made content concise and easy to digest, and used keywords (in the front-end and back-end) to make information easier to find. We also removed more than 500 PDFs to improve accessibility – some of them were out of date so we simply removed them, others were transformed into clear and accessible HTML pages. We worked extensively with subject matter experts, including Human Resources Policy, to make sure content was accurate. Pages often linked off to others with duplicated content, which ultimately expanded the scope of our initial review. ## Phase 2: Introducing content structure and improved governance In this phase, we worked with a user researcher to better define our user types. This was not a simple task, as the intranet is a central source used department wide. Eventually, we narrowed it down to the following 3 user groups: * general user – completes work tasks, wide range of roles, may also be a line manager * human resources and trade union user – creates and uses department policy * editor user – creates, edits and publishes, has full back-end access We made sure to recruit a diverse mix of users to represent our colleagues across different teams and roles. This included people with disabilities and neurodivergent needs. We gathered regular feedback in surveys and through usability sessions, where we used tree testing to examine different content structures. We built interactive wireframes to resemble a live site and encouraged users to complete tasks so we could monitor pain points, likes, dislikes and what users needed from an intranet. We also reached out to other government departments for demos and insights on intranet design decisions. This included the Department for Education (DfE), UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Department for Business and Trade (DBT) – thanks again to those who were involved! Example of mapping**** out**** content**** categories**** in**** Mural ### Futureproofing the intranet publishing process The intranet had over 600 authors with full access to edit, delete and publish content. Some users had published hundreds of pages, while others only 1 or 2 – all different styles, quality and accuracy. To futureproof it, we (the Publishing team) decided to centrally own the site and limit authors. The internal communications team continued to manage news stories and blogs. We introduced best practice guidance and a new governance process for all editors to follow, including a 2i review, accessibility checks, archiving policy and maintenance plan. Where information already exists, we link to it, not duplicate it. The content on the intranet is task-based and written in plain English where possible. Content is useful, informative and consistent to help people complete tasks easily. It goes without saying, as a digitally-minded team, we’re also focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and how we can use this technology on the intranet. However, the effectiveness of AI tools depends on the quality of the data they draw and interpret from – making it even more important that our intranet content is clear and structured correctly, with meaningful metadata. ## Phase 3: Designing a CMS inspired by GDS Throughout this project, we adopted many of the Government Design Principles into our work. Mainly, using user needs and colleague feedback to inform design decisions. But another area we wanted to explore was the design and components. WordPress as a platform is easy to use but certainly comes with its limitations. In our clunky, old version of the content management system (CMS), we couldn’t use components compliant with the GOV.UK Design System. And with so much research already done by the Government Digital Service (GDS), we utilised the GOV.UK Design System for inspiration on style, components and patterns when building our new CMS. We also worked with our technology colleagues to introduce improved security features and robust authentication settings for better access control, making the intranet more secure. The intranet homepage ## A modern, sharper, user-first platform Colleagues can now enjoy: * a look and feel consistent with GOV.UK patterns for a better user experience * components that follow the GOV.UK Design System and have been tested for accessibility * better navigation, including a single-entry menu at the top of the page * an improved search functionality, with new filter options * subscribing to authors, blogs and news stories, with notifications when anything new is published * a fully tested intranet site with improved accessibility * a more secure intranet with authentication settings The intranet project exemplifies how digital, user-centred approaches drive organisational efficiency. This new, smarter workspace will support collaboration across our workforce, saving time and resources, so that our colleagues can focus on the work that matters. It is also a solid foundation for continuous improvement from smarter intranet features such as the integration of AI tools, to better ways of measuring productivity impact to ensure lasting efficiency gains. Contact [email protected] to find out more about the work of the Publishing team or if you would like to learn about how our expertise can help you with your own projects.

Open Digital Planning is becoming a powerful force for change in local government. This supportive community, backed by MHCLG’s Digital Planning programme, brings together authorities committed to modernising their planning services and making essential data publicly available. The network is continuing to grow, with 24 new planning authorities joining this month, through the Digital Planning Improvement Fund. Each council is receiving £50,000 to transform how it delivers planning services, strengthen its digital capabilities and become part of the collaborative community that’s already making real improvements for residents, developers and stakeholders. ## A community-driven approach Open Digital Planning (ODP) offers much more than funding – it provides a supportive network where authorities support and learn from each other. Members benefit from peer-to-peer learning opportunities, digital and data training and comprehensive guidance through the ODP Hub. Regular in-person events, like the recent lively gathering in Gloucester (see picture above), help build valuable connections across the planning and Geographic Information System (GIS) community. ## **Getting a baseline** A hypothetical Digital Planning Maturity Assessment After joining the fund, new authorities begin their digital transformation journey with the Digital Planning Maturity Assessment – a tool that helps teams understand their digital strengths and identify areas to improve. Castle Point Borough Council found the assessment particularly valuable: > “The Digital Planning Maturity Assessment has been really useful. It helped us map out the data we needed and the required formats, making it easier for our team – including those with less technical experience – to contribute effectively. It's been a real team effort.” ## **Making planning data available for everyone** Each authority creates a tailored action plan and commits to making 4 crucial planning datasets available on the national Planning Data Platform: conservation areas, listed buildings, Tree Preservation Orders and Article 4 Directions. This transforms how residents, businesses and other stakeholders access vital planning information, moving from fragmented, hard-to-find data to standardised, searchable and always up-to-date information. When planning data is published in consistent formats, it enables better decision-making, reduces uncertainty and opens doors for innovation in the planning sector. ## **Learning and growing together** Creating lasting connections and shared learning is a cornerstone of being part of Open Digital Planning. Community managers from the Digital Planning programme organise regular training and monthly show-and-tell sessions, giving authorities space to share successes, tackle challenges together and learn from each other's innovations. The collaborative approach is transforming how authorities work, as Lee West, from the London Borough of Waltham Forest recently noted: > “The Digital Planning Improvement Fund and joining ODP has helped us to focus our limited resources on updating, standardising and sharing our key planning spatial datasets. The friendly and supportive ODP community has made the whole process an engaging and enjoyable journey, and we're excited about the future improvements coming up to help our residents.” ## **Join the Digital Planning Improvement Fund** Local planning authorities who haven’t yet joined the fund can apply to join the next cohort. Applications close at midday on 30 October 2025.  Check your eligibility and get ready to join our growing community. The 24 authorities starting their digital journey this month are: 1. Blackpool Borough Council 2. Braintree District Council 3. Brighton and Hove City Council 4. Chelmsford City Council 5. Herefordshire Council 6. Dartford Borough Council 7. Derby City Council 8. Fenland District Council 9. Gedling Borough Council 10. Harlow District Council 11. Borough Council of King's Lynn and West Norfolk 12. Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames 13. London Borough of Bexley 14. London Borough of Brent 15. London Borough of Hackney 16. Malvern Hills District Council 17. North Devon District Council 18. Nottingham City Council 19. Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council 20. Swale Borough Council 21. Westmorland and Furness Council 22. Wiltshire Council 23. Worcester City Council 24. Wychavon District Council ## **Want to know more?** We're heading to DigiGov Expo 2025 on 24 and 25 September at the ExCeL London. Digital Planning will be part of the MHCLG Digital pod in the Government Village along with colleagues from AI, Data and Local Digital teams. Our Head of Digital Delivery Baljit Rakhra will be joining a panel session on 'Building the Government Digital and Digital Civil Service' in the GovTech theatre on 25 September, while MHCLG's AI Director Tom Smith is speaking about 'Maximising the Benefits of AI in 2025', and Katie Owen, Service Owner in Local Digital, will join a panel discussing 'Local Resilience: Implementing Cyber Assessment Framework' on 24 September. * Learn more about the Digital Planning Improvement Fund and read case studies from councils about their experience. * Find out more about Open Digital Planning in our previous blog post, Open Digital Planning: a cross-sector partnership to transform local planning services**** and the Open Digital Planning website. * Keep up to date on our Digital Planning programme by visiting our website, following us on LinkedIn and subscribing to our newsletter.

Over the past six months, we’ve been developing our understanding of local government software markets. This work aims to address the concerns raised by councils through our programme’s evaluation and highlighted in the Future Councils pilot report. Common issues include: * poor interoperability between systems * lack of transparency in pricing * limited competition and choice * difficulties with migration and implementation We’ve also identified through roundtable discussions and feedback from partners that managing effective procurements and successfully exiting technology contracts is a challenge, particularly where internal capacity or capability is limited. With local government reorganisation, new unitary authorities will need to consolidate systems, migrate data, and harmonise business processes at an unprecedented scale. This will also impact technology contracts and procurement activities. ## Our approach to supporting better procurement decisions To help councils operate as intelligent buyers and support suppliers to meet sector ambitions, we are developing a software market intelligence tool. As a starting point, the Local Digital team have analysed publicly available contract data for six key service areas. This has helped us assess: * market health * competition levels * pricing trends * contract durations We’ve turned this analysis into an interactive dashboard. Our ambition is to evolve this into a tool that the sector can use to improve transparency and make more informed procurement decisions. You can preview the first iteration of the dashboard: Access our guidance note on the software market intelligence tool. ##  Get involved Councils are invited to help shape the software market intelligence tool through short virtual research session. This involves: * **completing our form** (5-10 minutes) to register your interest * taking part in a 1-hour session to discuss your needs and test the tool’s features Once you have submitted the form, a researcher will contact you (if places are still available) to schedule your session. We will close the form once capacity is reached. We may add additional sessions in the future. Follow our channels for the latest updates and opportunities: * LinkedIn * X (formerly Twitter) * Local Digital Newsletter * MHCLG Digital blog * Local Digital website

Energy performance certificates (EPCs) help people understand how energy efficient their buildings are and what they can do to improve it. They’re used by landlords to meet legal requirements, by renters and buyers to compare properties, and by homeowners to spot energy-saving opportunities. Policy teams also use EPCs to support government efforts to reach net zero targets and reduce fuel poverty. Concerns about how clear, accurate and policy-aligned EPCs have led to a government consultation in December 2024, exploring potential reforms, such as introducing multiple metrics to better reflect energy performance. To support this, the user-centred design (UCD) team within MHCLG’s Energy Performance of Buildings Register has been tasked with redesigning the EPC to better meet policy goals and improve the user experience. In this blog post, we share how we’re using user research to shape future improvements to EPCs, ensuring reforms reflect real-world needs and support government policy objectives. ## Our goal As EPCs influence both personal decisions and national policy, we set out to design a certificate that’s clear, intuitive and supports meaningful action, while also meeting policy objectives. To do this, we ran in-depth user research with landlords, homeowners, renters, buyers and policy professionals. We used a mix of research methods to explore their needs, decision-making priorities, and how best to communicate the proposed EPC metrics. We also looked at how the redesign could encourage investment in energy efficiency upgrades. This helps ensure the reform supports action at both individual and policy levels. ## What we did ### Exploring policy perspectives We’ve worked closely with our policy team throughout this project and they’ve been open to adopting a UCD approach. This collaboration helped us explore how EPCs are currently used across government and where design could make the most difference. To understand this in more detail, we started by mapping how government policies and schemes currently use EPCs as decision-making tools and policy levers. This gave us a clearer view of the wider policy landscape and highlighted opportunities to better align the certificate with strategic goals. We then interviewed key policy professionals across government. We explored how the proposed reforms might affect their work, how a redesigned EPC could support better policy outcomes, and how it could adapt to shifts in their policy areas. These conversations offered valuable insight into how design can support both the operational and strategic needs of policy teams, helping ensure the EPC remains relevant and adaptable as government priorities evolve. To build on existing knowledge, we reviewed industry reports with recommendations for EPC design. We combined these with insights from our policy interviews to shape the focus of our citizen research, which explored how EPCs influence property searches and decisions to improve energy efficiency. ### Understanding citizen experiences We prioritised inclusivity in recruitment for our user research, engaging a diverse mix of participants across UK regions, genders, ages, ethnicities, income levels and disability statuses. This helped us capture a broad range of experiences and perspectives, ensuring the redesign reflects the needs of all users. We interviewed landlords, renters, buyers and homeowners (our citizen stakeholders) to understand how they make decisions about home energy efficiency and what they want from a redesigned EPC. These interviews took place both virtually and in person, helping us uncover real-world insights into citizen needs, hidden pain points, practical barriers and emotional drivers. These are often harder to surface through traditional consultation methods. To build on these insights and test emerging themes at scale, we developed a survey exploring people’s needs, motivations and barriers around energy efficiency, both when searching for a home and considering improvements. We then carried out segmentation analysis to identify distinct groups within each stakeholder type. This confirmed that the patterns observed in interviews were not isolated cases but reflected broader population trends. The segmentation built a deeper understanding of our users, including their behaviours, experiences and attitudes, allowing us to design with clarity and empathy. To bring these insights into practice, we hosted virtual co-design workshops with each citizen stakeholder group. Together, we explored what an ideal interaction with an EPC could look like from their perspective. These sessions surfaced ideas grounded in lived experience and led to a set of service propositions. We’ve shared these with the wider team to inform ongoing design and policy discussions. This helps ensure the redesign reflects user needs and supports related policies. ## What we learnt Our research has surfaced insights that continue to support the EPC reform and the wider policy community we engaged early on. By bringing together citizen and policy perspectives, we’ve built a clearer understanding of how EPCs are interpreted and used, particularly when searching for a home or planning improvements, and where design could better support decision-making. We learned that citizen engagement with energy efficiency is shaped not just by cost and convenience, but also by trust, understanding and long-term value. Many users called for greater transparency, clearer guidance and practical support to act on EPC recommendations. The certificate itself was sometimes described as overwhelming or difficult to interpret at a glance. Many users said they had rarely consulted it during property searches, choosing only to look at the energy rating displayed on property portals. The EPC was often forgotten after purchase, with some users unaware that a dedicated service to look up their EPC exists. Some users felt that the EPC’s recommendations to improve home energy efficiency, though useful in theory, do not always align with the most practical or affordable steps people can take right away. Segmentation analysis from our surveys highlighted distinct user groups with different needs, behaviours and motivations. These segments will inform the initial redesign of the EPC and guide future research. The service propositions obtained from the co-design workshops reflect the diversity of our user base, supporting the development of an EPC that works for more people. Together, these insights may also help policy teams tailor interventions, communications and support, moving beyond a one-size-fits-all approach. ## What’s next We’re now working on the first concept for a redesigned EPC. As we move into this phase, we’ll continue working closely with policy stakeholders and citizens to test ideas and gather feedback. This next round of user research will help us refine the design and make sure it works for the people who use it and for the policies it supports. Read more articles from the Energy Performance of Buildings Register team on the MHCLG Digital blog.

We’re pleased to share a milestone in our social housing data work, the delivery of a new data standard to support Awaab’s Law. In this blog, we explain what we’ve delivered, what we’ve learnt, and how the work will continue with the Housing Associations Charitable Trust (HACT) and Data Futurists. We’ll also share upcoming opportunities for housing associations and councils to explore the standard and its implementation. ## **The importance of data standards** Over the past two years, our research into social housing data has shown how critical data standards are for effective housing services. But also, how a lack of good data standards can make it harder for repairs teams to complete jobs. Good data means repairs officers have the right information before arriving, such as the materials needed or tenant-specific requirements like hearing impairments. This leads to repairs being completed first time, higher tenant satisfaction, and less costly workarounds. ## **What we’ve learnt** We’ve found that inefficiencies in data alone can cost housing repairs and allocations an estimated £400 million every year. This is a conservative figure that excludes other services. Poor data standards can cost large organisations over £1 million when migrating to new systems. According to the Building Research Establishment, the cost of substandard housing is more than £1 billion a year in poor life outcomes. ## **Responding to Awaab’s Law** Data standards are not just about efficiency; they are essential for delivering new policy. The first phase of Awaab’s Law is expected to come into effect from 27 October. It focuses on tenant-specific vulnerabilities rather than general risk categories. For example, damp and mould are a greater risk to children, the elderly, and people with health conditions like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Many housing providers are finding it difficult to meet the new requirements. Some have chosen to address damp and mould across all properties as a preventative step – a welcome development. However, these homes will still need future repairs, and it's vital that processes are in place to support Awaab’s Law over the long term. In particular, housing providers must be able to identify and prioritise repair requests that involve vulnerable tenants. ## **What we’ve developed** To support this, we worked with HACT to redesign their repair data standards. We developed a new module focused on damp and mould, along with implementation guidance to help housing providers integrate it into their existing systems. The model records key parts of a repair request, including how it is raised, assessed, responded to, escalated, and closed, along with the data collected at each step. ## **The data model** The structure behind the model is shown in an Entity Relationship Diagram, which includes: * tenants * property * investigation appointments, * work orders Each part includes data elements that help identify hazards, assess vulnerability, and locate issues. The modular design means housing providers can add components to existing systems, reusing familiar HACT standards for repairs, property, and customer data. This makes it easier to update in future without large system changes. ## **A new approach to policy and data** For the first time, a data product has been developed alongside new policy. Our research shows that when legislation is introduced and councils are left to interpret and implement it on their own, it can lead to inefficiencies. Not all housing providers have the data skills to design effective data models. A modular standard that works with existing systems can help avoid workarounds and lead to better results. ## **Ownership and next steps** We’ve worked closely with colleagues at HACT and Data Futurists so they can take this work forward. They manage the existing HACT standards and are best placed to lead the next phase. The current version is a minimum viable product. It is the first working version of the data standard and includes core features and functionality. HACT and Data Futurists will test and refine the standard with housing providers to make sure it is robust and ready for adoption when Awaab’s Law comes into place. This includes running workshops and putting it through the Data Standard Authority’s endorsement process. ## **Opportunities to get involved** We are planning an in-person workshop in London on 12 September for housing associations and councils. If you'd like to take part, please contact [email protected]. We’ll allocate places on a first-come basis, making sure there’s a good mix of technical and housing expertise and locations. Follow our channels for the latest updates and opportunities: * LinkedIn * X (formerly Twitter) * Local Digital Newsletter * MHCLG Digital blog * Local Digital website

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, user research in government has largely shifted online. This transition has brought notable benefits, for example in terms of convenience and flexibility, but it has significantly changed the nature of our interactions. For our team within Elections Digital, working on initiatives to improve voter registration, the virtual constraints pose specific challenges. Our goal is to assist the estimated 7-8 million UK citizens incorrectly registered to vote, or not registered at all, by making the process simple and accessible. In future, they may be invited to register when using other government digital services. Our statistics show that more than 80% of current users of the GOV.UK Register to Vote service do so on a mobile device. Yet our early usability testing was only conducted remotely, on desktops. We realised that laptop testing restricted our understanding of the mobile-first experience of many citizens interacting with government services. Formatting, accessibility and interaction patterns are missed when viewed through desktop screen sharing. We agreed it was essential to undertake a round of mobile testing for the project. The team initially considered remote mobile testing, where participants shared their phone screens via Microsoft Teams (MS Teams), but we discovered multiple issues: * **Privacy risks:** Participants might accidentally reveal personal content. * **Technical barriers:** Screen sharing is inconsistent across devices and the MS Teams app is restricted on some company phones. * **Loss of facial cues:** MS Teams does not support simultaneous screen and camera sharing, so we cannot read participants’ expressions – valuable context that can complement or even contradict what they say. We considered workarounds like tech checks and creating a guide to screen sharing, but ultimately decided the complexity outweighed the benefits. That left the option of in-person testing. ## **Planning our first in-person usability testing** This was the first time anyone in the Elections Directorate had proposed in-person usability testing, and it came with its own risks around logistics, liability and our duty of care to participants. We explored hiring a usability lab – to access features like eye-tracking and one-way mirrors – but ultimately opted for MHCLG meeting rooms in Birmingham, which were free and adaptable to our needs. We worked with an external recruiter to enlist participants based on Electoral Commission research into groups least likely to be registered to vote. Recruitment was challenging due to our criteria and a tight 2-week timeline. We scheduled 6 back-to-back sessions on a single day, with alternating facilitators. Our designers created prototypes of the communications we would show participants and the service itself, so they could move through with minimal facilitator interference. We created a discussion guide with mobile-specific prompts and contingency plans for technical issues. To reduce technical issues on the day, we decided to use a single personal phone with a proven ability to share to Teams. This allowed us to record sessions and let remote observers watch in real time. We used virtual observer rooms during each test to allow colleagues across the directorate to observe sessions in real time without disrupting the participant (see diagram below). Each session involved 2 separate MS Teams meetings: one for the facilitator and participant, and another for observers. A separate, remote facilitator managed both calls, sharing the live session into the observer room, while ensuring observers remained muted and off-camera to minimise distractions. Overview of the set-up for the in-person usability testing sessions. ## **What happened on testing day** On 3 July, we arrived in Birmingham armed with phones, chargers, extension cables and printed materials, ready for all eventualities. We also pre-downloaded the testing materials to laptops in case of wifi issues. Despite a few hiccups with recruitment (always be prepared for late dropouts!) the day ran smoothly. Each session followed a carefully choreographed routine: * Participants checked in and were briefed by the facilitator. * The phone screen and participant video were shared to observers via Teams (see image below). * Observers watched remotely and submitted questions via chat. * After each session, we reviewed feedback collaboratively and completed an assumptions table – a tool used to capture what we believe to be true about users, their needs and the problem space. * Phones were wiped down between sessions. View of the session from the remote observers’ perspective on MS Teams. ## **What we learned** In-person testing offered unique insights into how participants interact with services on mobile: * **Readability and cognitive load:** Due to the small screen size, mobile content is compressed, making it harder to scan and absorb. Participants often skimmed information on screens saturated with text.'Banner blindness' was more pronounced: some scrolled past GOV.UK headers or overlooked top-page content. * **Micro behaviours:** We could observe scrolling, hesitation and physical reactions in real time. * **Social cues:** Sometimes participants’ behaviour contradicted their words, suggesting social desirability bias: pressure to provide positive feedback in an unfamiliar, 'official' setting. This round of in-person mobile testing reminded us of the value of experimentation and adaptability in user research. Given that most users register to vote on mobile, it felt essential to test the service in that format. In-person testing isn’t a cure-all. It brings logistical complexity and introduces potential biases. Participants may feel compelled to say the ‘right’ thing to please the interviewer. While we managed to organise this round in 4 weeks, the effort may be too intensive for larger or more geographically diverse studies. Similarly, virtual observer rooms offer clear benefits – such as wider engagement, inclusivity and learning – but they require additional planning, effort and dedicated facilitation. It’s important to factor in the extra coordination, and people needed to run them effectively. Still, mobile testing of government services is critical to meeting users where they are. Our experience showed the value of reincorporating in-person methods for this testing, alongside the virtual norm. We strongly encourage other researchers to consider how they might once again meet users face-to-face to build more effective services. Follow the progress of the Elections Digital team on the MHCLG Digital blog.

Every year thousands of planning decisions are made which shape the future of where we all live, work and visit. They determine which developments are approved and how our places evolve. Yet this crucial data is stored in different ways and in different local authority systems across the country, making it difficult to access and analyse the data, understand patterns, track housing delivery and build new data-driven tools. That’s why in our last blog post, we set out how we are expanding the scope of our data specification work to cover the whole planning permission process and are beginning to work on standardising planning application decisions. This focuses on the point at which a local planning authority makes a decision, and a decision notice is published. This is a crucial next step because it records the outcome of the planning permission process. Aligning submission specifications (input) with decision specifications (output) will encourage a consistent flow of quality data throughout the system. ## **Key differences in decision specifications** While closely aligned with submissions, there are key differences: * **Purpose:** Submissions are for validating and assessing a proposal; decisions are for recording what has been decided. * **Users:** Submissions are primarily for applicants and planning officers; decisions serve a broader audience, including monitoring teams, developers, and policymakers. * **Focus:** Submissions are about input; decisions are about recording outcomes. ## **Why this matters** This work matters because standardised decision data serves everyone involved in the planning ecosystem. It means that: * local planning authorities have better, consistent oversight of their decisions and share their data more easily for regional and national monitoring * central government can more easily monitor and track things like housing delivery * developers can easily access the data, understand patterns, across administrative boundaries * property technology companies can build smarter tools that work across England based on reliable standardised data * communities can gain insight into the developments taking place in their area and how decisions are reflecting their interests ## **Our approach** We've started by revisiting an early working draft from 2022 and are now drafting a new data model, aligning it with our submission work. Unlike submissions, where we had existing forms to work from, for decisions, we're starting small and only adding elements when a clear need is evidenced. Here are some principles we are following for the decisions specification(s): 1. Include only what we’re confident adds value. This means no filler data. Every field must have a clear use case. 2. Validate every addition with real needs. For example if you need things like dwellings-count or developer engagement details, tell us, and we can include that. 3. Break things into connected, reusable parts. In the same way as we have with submission specifications, breaking things up into smaller, modular data components will mean specifications are easier to maintain, reuse and mandate. 4. Avoid asking for information that can be inferred from data. Rather than asking for applicants to calculate things where we could get systems, compute them with appropriate input data. ## **How you can shape this work** The benefits of getting this right extend far beyond just having neat and tidy data. Specifications which standardise our decisions data will transform our understanding of how the planning system is working in England and help us all to better understand how our places are changing. We are kicking off a research project to understand exactly what decision data is needed and how people want to use it. This is where we need your expertise and experience. Please complete our survey and share your requirements and use cases. We will be discussing the initial findings from the survey in our open data standards community meeting at 10.30am on 20 August. Please register to receive an invite to this session. The best specifications are built with the people who use them, so please keep feeding in your insights – we're eager to collaborate with you to get this right! > You can find information, updates and relevant links about this work on the planning applications submissions project homepage. > > Keep up to day by following the Digital Planning programme, on LinkedIn and subscribing to the newsletter.

User-centred design (UCD) at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is growing, and we’re building the systems, structures and communities it needs to scale efficiently. Across government, specialist Research Operations (ReOps) and Design Operations (DesOps) roles are emerging to help designers and researchers work more efficiently. At MHCLG, we’ve taken a blended approach: introducing UCD Operations (UCD Ops) to support both disciplines in one function. In this blog, we share our experiences as UCD Ops Managers, explaining the unique role of UCD Ops, the challenges we’ve faced in blending two disciplines, the impact we’ve made so far, and our plans for the future. ## About us We are both UCD Operations Managers in MHCLG. Our backgrounds span service improvement, HR and user research in the NHS, central and Welsh government (Yana), and ReOps and participant recruitment in the private sector and the Civil Service (Cathryn). ## What UCD Ops is and why it matters Ops roles are essential for creating the right conditions for teams to do their best work. In the context of user-centred design, Ops set up the systems, structures and support that enable researchers and designers to focus on solving user problems, not navigating administrative or bureaucratic hurdles. Ops is not just about managing day-to-day tasks – it’s a strategic function. It ensures that teams have the right processes in place to work efficiently, fostering long-term sustainability and scalability. As UCD teams grow, so do their challenges. Without dedicated operational support, researchers and designers end up spending time solving internal problems like managing processes or sourcing tools, which slows progress and introduces risks. Ops addresses these challenges by streamlining workflows, reducing duplication and ensuring compliance with critical standards like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This strategic support allows teams to focus on delivering high-quality UCD work while maintaining safe, sustainable practices that align with broader digital strategy goals. While ReOps and DesOps are well established in government departments like the HMRC, the Department for Education (DfE) and the NHS, they often function separately. At MHCLG, we’ve taken a different approach by merging ReOps and DesOps into a single function – UCD Ops. This ensures consistency, reduces duplication, and fosters stronger collaboration across research and design teams. This unified approach provides a consistent strategy, holistic support and greater flexibility, making it more efficient and scalable. UCD Ops helps streamline operations while aligning both disciplines under one shared vision. We focus on: * Streamlining systems and processes for smoother, more efficient operations * Providing guidance, standards and resources for best practice * Creating spaces and connections for knowledge sharing ## How we got started and what we’ve done UCD practice at MHCLG is decentralised, with practitioners embedded across multiple directorates, under different management and recruitment processes. Our UCD community of practice helps build connections and is working towards more consistent ways of working. We’re not tied to one team or discipline, which gives us a bird’s eye view of what’s working, what’s missing, and where improvements can have the biggest impact. One of our early challenges was figuring out where to start, so we used the insights from our listening tour with UCD professionals to the create a roadmap to help us think strategically and focus on the areas with the greatest opportunities to reduce risk, connect people and improve consistency. In our first few months, we’ve: * mapped all UCD practitioners to improve visibility and connection across teams * improved onboarding and access to our communities of practice and key resources * introduced new consent forms to support ethical and consistent research practices * replaced a long-standing user research tool with a more cost-effective alternative that better meets community needs * increased support to accelerate delivery of a UCD Manual for MHCLG ensuring key resources, templates and information are efficiently centralised for easy access * raised the profile of UCD Ops and clarified our remit to build trust and understanding * co-created practical guidance around data protection and existing tools with the community to ensure relevance and adoption ## What we’ve learned Since starting, we’ve learned a lot about the unique challenges and opportunities that come with building UCD Ops. 1. **Collaboration is key:** Collaborating with our community to listen to their needs and learning from other Ops teams in government has been vital. It’s helped us avoid common pitfalls and move forward with confidence. 2. **Visibility is vital:** Making UCD Ops visible in the organisation has generated stronger buy-in from stakeholders and ensures that the UCD community knows where to turn for support. 3. **Be flexible:** Our approach must adapt to the unique needs of our UCD community whilst aligning with broader organisational goals of bringing consistency and standardisation to the practice. 4. **Ops is strategic, not admin:** It’s not just about fixing immediate problems but about creating longer-term sustainable and scalable UCD practices. ## What’s next for UCD Ops at MHCLG We’ve built strong momentum but we’re still at the start of our journey. Next, we’re focusing on areas that will strengthen our foundations and better support our growing UCD community. In the coming months, we’ll be: * centralising the secure storage of research data, using automated retention policies * reviewing our UCD tool stack for value and efficiency * improving access to key user groups for research purposes * improving UCD recruitment and onboarding with our digital and data recruitment team * developing the MHCLG UCD Manual into a central hub for best practice * rolling out ethics and data protection training We also have aspirations to build an insights library in the future. We know that this is a big task and will start with looking at how we can create consistent terms and categories for research. The aim here is to reduce duplication and make it easier for teams to organise, share and access research insights. We’re excited to keep building on what we’ve started. ## A final note We are so grateful for the support of more mature Ops teams from other government departments and the cross-government ReOps community. Their experiences and guidance have been invaluable in helping us shape our approach to UCD Ops here at MHCLG. We’re excited to continue building on these lessons as we scale the future of UCD in our department. We’re also keen to keep learning from others. If you’re working in UCD Ops, ReOps or DesOps in your department or organisation, we’d love to connect. Reach out to us at [email protected].

The launch of the Opportunity for PropTech Report, earlier this year, at Google’s Headquarters in London. Last week marked a pivotal moment for scaling PropTech (property technology) and shaping how this technology can help deliver the government’s target of 1.5million homes over this Parliament. We hosted, with Geovation from Ordnance Survey, the PropTech Innovation Challenge bootcamps. These competitive pitches brought together industry and government judges to select a cohort of scalable solutions which can help us tackle some of the most pressing challenges in planning and housing. The timing couldn't be more significant. Recent artificial intelligence (AI) announcements are highlighting the transformative potential of digital technologies, while the government’s industrial strategy positions PropTech as a key enabler for economic growth. The question is no longer whether PropTech can make a difference – it's how quickly we can identify and scale solutions across the entire system. ## **From green shoots to tangible results** We’ve seen PropTech deliver real results through our PropTech Innovation Fund. This was introduced in 2021 to support the PropTech sector and Local Planning Authorities to accelerate the adoption of digital planning tools and fast track the plan-making process. Four rounds later we have supported 77 local planning authorities (LPAs) across 114 pilots – the largest UK Government PropTech programme working with local government and industry at pace and scale. Our commissioned research, the Opportunity for PropTech report, published by the UK PropTech Association (UKPA) and PUBLIC earlier this year, shows the sector has the potential to grow by 20% by 2032 and generate revenue of approximately £72bn. It also contained a number of measures designed to deliver growth and drive investment. The case studies we’ve developed with the sector, demonstrate how PropTech solutions can unlock significant benefits across planning and regeneration, with ripple effects supporting broader economic growth. The front cover of the Opportunity for PropTech report But despite the increased demand from local government and compelling evidence of benefits, scaling remains a persistent challenge. Even with an ambitious reform agenda across government, persistent barriers continue to limit adoption. These include market awareness gaps, procurement hurdles, lack of evidence, skills shortages, prohibitive costs, and a lack of digital infrastructure, interoperability and policy guidance. ## **Evolving our approach  ** That's why our approach has evolved over the past 6 months. When planning the next stage of LPA funding, we wanted to ensure the pilots could scale and benefit the wider system. This shaped the core principles of the Continuous Funding round, which for the first time requires funded projects to produce replicable blueprints – tangible guides that enable other LPAs to learn from proven experiences and be able to adopt different PropTech solutions with confidence. This is just one of the tactics we have explored to see how we can tackle barriers and enable the PropTech market to thrive. Through our work with Policy Lab, cross-government engagement and industry workshops, we’ve also learned that lasting change requires sustainable intervention across the entire PropTech ecosystem. Simply funding more individual pilots isn’t enough – we need to tackle the underlying market conditions that will allow those pilots to embed into standard practice. We’ve therefore shaped our ongoing PropTech programme around strategic partnerships that bridge the public and private sectors, with a view to taking PropTech from the margins to the mainstream: * Digital Task Force for Planning – we have seed funded the Task Force to create and evolve the Digital Planning Directory, a comprehensive online resource for state-of-the-art digital planning services, tailored to meet the diverse needs of stakeholders in both public and private sectors. * AI in planning showcases – supporting events hosted by the Task Force and the Mayor of London to demonstrate cutting-edge applications * UK PropTech Association – supporting a PropTech growth programme to build awareness of the sector with key partners, fostering greater collaboration and increase economic growth and productivity. * Geovation (part of Ordnance Survey) collaboration – our PropTech Innovation Challenge represents the first time our Innovation Fund has directly supported the marketplace itself, putting partnership at the heart of solutions to accelerate 1.5 million homes. Each relationship is designed to strengthen networks and tackle adoption barriers collectively. Dr Wei Yang, CEO Digital Task Force for Planning, at the launch of the Digital Planning Directory ## **  What happens next? ** Last week’s PropTech Innovation Challenge bootcamps marked a high point in our strategic evolution. With 85 applicants working alongside 225 partners competing for funding that could unlock over a million homes, we weren’t just selecting projects – we were identifying solutions that can genuinely transform planning and housing systems. The competitive pitch style format allowed judges from across government and industry to dive deeper into shortlisted applications. Innovators from across the country brought their university, council or developer partners into the room to demonstrate how their solutions will be tested in real world environments – from housing developments to active planning departments. We aim to announce the successful projects with Geovation in September. The PropTech Innovation Challenge judges on bootcamp day 3. Alongside the bootcamps the UKPA hosted their first industry roundtable, bringing together senior voices from government, local authorities, and the PropTech sector to discuss the PropTech adoption barriers in the planning system and what can be done to overcome them. The discussions have given us much food for thought and also reinforced what we've learned through our Innovation Fund – that systematic barriers require collective solutions. And so, the work continues! Building on these insights the UKPA will be organising further industry roundtables as well as regional roadshow events with different councils on their ambitions for digital planning adoption, we’ll be publishing blueprints from our Continuous Funding projects and supporting the Task Force with the continuing development of the Digital Planning Directory. All of these activities serve the same goal – converting PropTech’s proven potential into systematic change that is driven by, and with, industry stakeholders. This is how we convert ambitions into action – and finally realise PropTech’s true potential as an enabler for faster plan-making, planning system improvements, housing and infrastructure delivery. > Keep up to date by following the Digital Planning programme, on LinkedIn and subscribing to the newsletter.

## Embedding digital into policy In MHCLG, a central element of our digital strategy is ‘embedding digital in policy’. For clarity, when we say 'digital', this includes the ethos, methods, skills and mindset that is typical in digital working. User-centred design you might say. Towards the end of 2024 we established a new team – the Rapid Policy Insight (RPI) team. This team works with policy teams to embed user-centred design (UCD) practices in the way work is done. The logic is that the more UCD activity there is in policy, the better our policy work in the department meets the needs of users. ## Compressed discovery – expanded influence RPI is a 4-person unit – a product manager, a service designer and 2 user researchers. Each person brings profession-specific expertise but is comfortable overlapping and supporting each other to help speed the work along – facilitating workshops, analysing research, liaising with the policy team. RPI spends just 7 weeks with each team, establishing the problem, the assumptions, the shape of the system, and the journeys and challenges that the users go through. By quickly exploring the riskiest assumptions that drive the policy activity, the RPI team is able to leave the policy team with clear practical advice on how to refine existing ideas, refocus on more pressing ones and even stop those initiatives that appear to not be aligned with the most pressing needs. ## Two tracks to positive change The logic of the rapid approach is to be able to partner with as many policy teams as possible. The more teams we work with, the more the approach grows, the more positive outcomes and the greater the efficiency gains as well. The theory is this: ### Provide practical value Delivering the insights and recommendations from our 7-week project gives immediate value of UCD to the policy team. It captures the imagination but also shapes the policy work in a way that will shape decision making on that topic in the short term. ### Change behaviours Our collaborative, open way of working during the project makes UCD and agile methods more visible, giving the policy team the understanding and confidence to deploy them on future challenges. This supports more effective decision making in the long term. ## We’ve changed a lot in a short time You can read that subtitle in 2 ways: * The way the RPI team works has changed a lot since we started – which is true. * We’ve created a lot of change through doing our work – which is also true! We build in (albeit small) reflection periods between our projects and look to reiterate our model before we start again. We have pushed ourselves to test the 7-week model overall, plus reflect in detail on each workshop and interaction in a way that can hone a robust and replicable playbook. We’ve done that based on the feedback from the teams we’ve worked with, asking ourselves – does our service work for our users? We’ve learned we need to embed ourselves more closely with policy teams, to understand the constantly changing landscape they work in and be responsive to that. We’ve learned to do less – create a tighter scope and pick a key assumption to focus our work around. Deliberately not try to explore the whole problem. There isn’t time. We’ve clarified our role in terms of being the starter for good user-centred working, rather than the whole service. We’ve also learned that we’ve created value in all of our projects. Often lots of value. We have: * seen people recruited to bring UCD elements to future work * shaped advice to minsters that has set up a 'test and learn' approach to meet user needs *  embedded a user-centric approach in how to invite bids for a new fund The appetite for our work is strong and our list of potential projects is growing. ## In it for the long haul The challenge next is – keeping up the momentum. Can we really say that our second ‘track’ of change – embedding user-centred behaviours for the long term – works in the long term? So far it looks really positive. We have teams returning to us to use templates and methods that we deployed with them. We have referrals to other policy teams where our previous teams can see the opportunity for our work. This suggests the effort and the focus that policy teams put in while working with us doesn’t just drop away as soon as the final show and tell finishes. Our next challenge is: what more can we do to really push forward that ‘digital-ness’ in policy. How can the wider support offer from digital continue with teams on that journey – acknowledging that while policy teams learn lots while with us, they are not experts in UCD at the end of 7 weeks (in the same way that we are not experts on their policy then either). What can we do to support them in other ways through the often (always?) complex and convoluted policy journey. We’ve created this model and are seeing it working. We want to continually examine it and think about where it should go next given our overall aim. We’re aware others have similar approaches and have tried similar things. So, if you have seen parallels in your work, want to know more, or just want to comment on what you’ve read, please do get in touch by email: [email protected].

Since October 2024, our team has been hard at work standardising the planning application process. This is a crucial step in the Digital Planning programme's vision for a more data-rich planning system. We're focused on building the foundational data standards that will enable better services and more informed decision-making for communities across the country. ## **Why standardise?** Good quality data standards underpin making consistent data available, which in turn allows for the creation of new services and products. These then empower communities to make better decisions and drive positive change. Our current efforts are concentrated on the very first part of this journey - designing robust data standards**** that enable the planning permission process. Data standards ensure that information is consistent and easily understood across different systems, making it simpler for people to find, use, and trust the data they need. By reducing confusion and errors, they help end users get faster, clearer answers and better services. Without this foundation, creating an efficient and data-driven planning ecosystem is incredibly challenging. We want to make the entire planning application and permission process data rich through standardisation. This will then help someone who wants to submit a planning application to build something navigate the process and find out if their plans can go ahead. ## **Our guiding principles** Our work has so far been guided by 4 core rules: * Start at the start: We began by focusing on planning application submissions, as this is the initial entry point for engaging with the planning process. * Aim for the floor: We are identifying the minimum viable set of standards needed to create a data-rich ecosystem without disrupting existing processes. * Don’t break anything: We're committed to not breaking current software or approaches. * Work in the open: The planning system involves a multitude of organisations and individuals. By working in the open, we ensure that anyone and everyone can engage with our work, helping us to avoid unintended negative consequences. A poster referring to one of the Government Design Principles: 'Make things open: it makes things better' ## **What we've done so far** We've taken the existing application submission standards, which are the forms found on GOV.UK, and meticulously analysed them. These forms outline the legal requirements for making a planning application. We've broken down these forms into their individual component parts, such as applicant name, address, parking, and waste storage. By understanding these individual data elements, we've identified how many there are, what they are, and how they relate. For instance, we've found that ‘applicant name and address’ appears on all 24 of the template forms for different types of planning permission, while ‘site address’ appears on 23. Understanding these nuances helps us define the core data elements of the planning application submission system. Defining these individual components allows us to recombine them into data artefacts that mimic current application forms. In the future, this means that instead of relying on static PDF forms, planning applications can be handled as dynamic data. This consistency in data flow through systems, from application service providers to local authority back-office systems, will ensure data is consistent and of a known quality. This data will then underpin the decisions made by local authorities. Modular or component data specifications are defined. These data specifications can then be brought together into combined specifications for each planning application type, which in turn means that the data within systems and used by local authorities is consistent. Crucially, these data specifications also mean that data from individual local authorities can be easily and consistently brought together. This will provide a much clearer national view of planning activity and enable better reporting. Data specifications means that the data can be easily brought together. ## **Our progress** We brought together an advisory group and wider community of planning officers, software providers, policy specialists, and digital teams to create a specification for each component, We codified all the component parts and made them available as working draft specifications on GitHub, and then invited everyone to review the baseline specifications. We've also successfully recombined these components to mimic the current PDF application forms. In May, we reached a key deadline for community feedback on these initial working draft specifications. This feedback is vital to move our specifications to a ‘pilot stage’, where we are much more confident that they are on the right track and that they are ready for systematic testing. We've also been documenting challenging issues and creating a backlog of suggestions for future iterations of the specification. Alongside this we've been collaborating closely with development management and policy colleagues, getting their feedback and beginning to consider the future burden of maintaining a data-rich system compared to the current forms-based approach. We're also working with the Digital Planning Policy team on how to mandate these specifications using the Planning Data powers which were taken through as part of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act. ## **What's next?  ** Our immediate next steps are focused on making our pilot submission specifications ready to be mandated as national standards, driven by rigorous testing and active community collaboration: ### **Further testing** The specifications aren't ready for mandating until they've undergone more detailed testing. This involves analysing and categorising feedback from early testing and iterating the draft specifications where appropriate. We'll also begin developing and sharing the first version of a declarative model to support this testing. ### **Expanding our scope** It's clear our standards need to apply to the entire planning permission process, not just the submitted applications. We're now kick-starting a research project into application decisions and looking at where we need to develop additional specifications to cover the whole planning permission process. ### **Local flexibility** Our component structure will allow local requirements to be added on top of national standards. A key part of this is developing a draft approach for handling national and local planning requirements, enabling councils to share their specific needs. ### **Integrating existing data** We continue to gather and publish data via the Planning Data Platform on essential inputs to the planning permission process, such as listed buildings, Article 4 directions, conservation areas, and tree preservation orders. In parallel, we'll be drafting and consulting the community we have been working with on useful codelists for critical planning information like application types and tenure types. ### **Roadmap to mandation** We're building a roadmap for the next year, aiming to move from pilot specifications for submissions to candidate status (ie ready for mandating) and then the mandating process. We are aiming for a timeframe of approximately 12 months for mandating from candidate status. ## **Restarting engagement with the sector** Working in the open remains at the heart of our approach which is why we’re excited to relaunch our engagement with the sector. We're updating the terms of reference for our previous advisory and community groups and would like to actively invite new members to join our refreshed data standards community. Over the next 3 months we’ll present specific opportunities for contribution, ensuring community input directly shapes our ongoing work and priorities. ## **Join our community and get involved** The next few months are important for this work. We would like to invite everyone with an interest in data standards to access and contribute to our approach by visiting the component and combined specifications pages, where you can share your thoughts and comments. Join our focussed virtual data standards community, which will bring together both existing and new participants with an interest in this work for the whole planning permission process.  There are no restrictions on who can join. In the coming weeks we’ll outline how you can help us test these specifications and get involved in shaping the next ones. Visit our webpage (which we are currently redeveloping based on user research) for information about our work to date and our plans for the next few months. If you would like to participate in our community please register - there will be many opportunities to get involved over the next few months. Our first online session takes place on Wednesday 23 July from 10.30am to 12pm. > You can find information, updates and relevant links about this work on the planning applications submissions project homepage. > > Keep up to date by following the Digital Planning programme, on LinkedIn and subscribing to the newsletter.

The Common Tools as a Service (CTaaS) team is responsible for building standardised, reliable and reusable tools and platforms for everyone in MHCLG. We help teams to be more efficient, deliver quickly and reduce operational costs. In the past 2 months, we have been working on one of the most conceptually complex challenges we have faced so far – building an effective real-time dashboard to support senior civil servants when assessing our department’s delivery performance. Performance reports are a perfect example of a common problem across all departments and indeed across any major organisation. We all need to be able to track progress, but it can be difficult to get a dashboard right. This task is complex because there are lots of different ways to measure the department’s work. Senior leaders often have their own preferences as to what information they like to see in a report, how they use it, and what they think may be important. In this blog post, I talk about the research we’ve done so far with our users, as part of our work to make performance reports more fit for purpose, ultimately enhancing the decision-making process for leaders. I will also discuss what we’ve learnt in the process so far and what we’re doing next. ## The problem Currently, some reports rely on a significant amount of explanatory material (usually text, which takes a long time to read) rather than the actual data underpinning those explanations. While they do provide a snapshot of a given moment, it can be difficult to understand change over time. This can also make it difficult to pick out the most significant points for discussion, which can limit senior civil servants’ ability to make informed decisions. These problems arise because the relevant data is kept in numerous places. But equally significant, these practices are historical. It is simply how some of the main delivery reports have always been done. There is therefore ample opportunity to innovate and build something more fit for purpose, which requires less time to produce, freeing-up staff resource to focus on delivery itself. ## What we did As any good user researcher will tell you, you can’t get much done without directly engaging users themselves. In the case of this project, however, that was going to prove more difficult than usual, because senior civil servants are always stretched for time. Their diaries can fluctuate a lot as they are required to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. ### Observing primary users Early on, it was agreed I could attend one of the main monthly delivery management meetings, so that I could observe the existing reports being used in action. I then wrote up what I observed as a short ethnographic account, focusing on the kinds of interests senior civil servants had in the reports they were discussing, and the aspects of delivery management that they seemed to focus on. From here, we could begin to draw out the main user needs and the main concepts, which – if validated – could define the design goals of our dashboard. ### Interviews with secondary users Opportunities for meetings with senior civil servants were limited due to time constraints, so we also arranged interviews with people who: *  sometimes attend these meetings *  have their own understanding of delivery performance management *  currently produce these reports We can think of these people as secondary users. As yet, nothing said about our primary user group (senior civil servants) has been contradicted by secondary users.  The secondary users have proven a brilliant resource for painting a picture of good delivery performance management. ## What we learnt ### Focusing on the things that matter Generally, senior leaders do not want to spend time discussing ‘business as usual’. They do not just want reassurance about the department being on track for X, Y, or Z. Some secondary users we spoke to felt that existing reports spend too much time recognising achievements. Instead, and many other research participants agreed, senior civil servants primarily want to know where their interventions might be required. We ended up capturing this finding as focussing on the ‘reds’. This refers to the common RAG rating methodology (recording statuses of activities as either red, amber or green). There are lots of other ways to measure and track the status of activities, but ‘reds’ has become our catchall term for when things are looking like they are going wrong or are in danger of going wrong. Senior leaders are also primarily interested in projects and programmes that matter the most for the ministerial objectives. Managing by exception, on the most exceptional activities. ### Get to know your data model The main reason that the Common Tools team took on this project is because we are responsible for the ‘Delivery and Risk Manager’ (DRM). The DRM is a powerful new tool, built on Microsoft Power Apps, which our team is refining to centralise and streamline how MHCLG manages projects, programmes, portfolios and risks. It acts as a single data-entry point for all our priority projects, eliminating the need for multiple reporting systems and reducing repetitive manual processes. With built-in functionality for tracking milestones, schedules, risks, issues and tasks, it provides a complete view of delivery progress in real time. The existence of the DRM opens up opportunities for new kinds of reporting. The trick, in our project, was to find how to draw out the most significant data, and to present it to users in the most effective way, to achieve their goals. We therefore needed to keep the technical constraints of the DRM in mind at all times so that we could: * identify data needs which the DRM does not currently meet but which senior civil servant reports require * know which parts of the DRM could be useful when playing back to users in a Power BI report (Power BI is Microsoft’s data visualisation tool) Our collaboration was enabled by building a shared understanding of the DRM’s ‘data model’, which describes all of the fields in the DRM and how they relate to one another. We also layered on top of this model the actual user interface of the DRM, so we could see not just the names of data points but also how they are added by DRM users. From there, it was a matter of picking out the fields which could matter most, so we knew what visualisations might be worth making. ## What’s next We are now preparing to bring a beta prototype dashboard, in Power BI, to some upcoming delivery performance management meetings. We’re keen to watch our users use the new report in Power BI and get feedback on that. We are also arranging interviews with some of our secondary users to talk through the most recent designs and see if there are any gaps in what we’re doing. The work of our team contributes to delivering our departmental digital strategy, notably through enhancing operational excellence. Learn more about our digital strategy’s objectives and principles. Find out more about the work we’re doing in Common Tools or contact our team.

How do we bridge the gap between our ambitious housing targets and the complex realities of planning and development? The answer may lie in the innovative solutions proposed through our PropTech Innovation Challenge – a powerful demonstration of how targeted innovation can help us tackle some of the most pressing challenges in the planning and housing sectors. The 116 Expressions of Interest and 84 applications we have received, from start-ups to other innovators, reflect the sector’s real appetite for change. We're also thrilled to see that 225 partners have joined forces with the innovators – including small and medium enterprise (SME) developers, universities and local planning authorities – highlighting the readiness by all involved to co-create scalable solutions that can deliver real impact. ## Addressing real-world challenges The Challenge, which we’re running in collaboration with Geovation, from Ordnance Survey, has been designed around a set of carefully developed problem statements — each one grounded in extensive research and real-world challenges and opportunities across land ownership, small site delivery and infrastructure certainty. You can find out more about the statements and the research that informed them in our previous blog post. These statements are not theoretical but directly address national priorities, including the government’s ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes by the end of this Parliament as part of the wider mission to kickstart economic growth. What's particularly significant is the overwhelming interest to our second problem statement— "How might we increase the attractiveness of small sites for SME developers and other new market entrants through streamlining the processes involved in small site development?" This challenge question attracted over two thirds of the total applications – a clear signal that the market sees tremendous potential for small sites to play a big part of delivering 1.5 million homes. This interest directly aligns with the Deputy Prime Minister's announcement during Housing Week, in May, which highlighted this government’s focus on supporting small sites and SME delivery. The PropTech Innovation Challenge forms part of a comprehensive package of measures designed to empower SME housebuilders to build out smaller sites faster. We are excited to see how technology and innovation can serve as crucial enablers in unlocking this potential. ## The innovative solutions We've been truly impressed by the breadth and quality of solutions proposed. The applications range from artificial intelligence-powered platforms transforming land data accessibility and automating planning processes, to digital tools that de-risk investments for SME developers. Some solutions focus on leveraging data to identify viable sites quickly, while others promote the benefits of having the right infrastructure data to support early-stage feasibility studies and provide developers with greater certainty. The vast range of innovative ideas demonstrates how the sector is ready to embrace new tools and thinking and discover new ways of working to meet the needs of the future. Equally important has been the spirit of collaboration that underpins this initiative. The co-design partnerships formed through the Challenge — between start-ups, local authorities, housing associations, academic institutions and developers of all sizes — are a testament to what’s possible when the public and private sectors come together with a shared purpose. ## What’s next for the applicants? Over the coming weeks, the applications will be carefully reviewed by an exceptional panel of judges from across central and local government – including MHCLG, the Environment Agency, HM Land Registry, Homes England, the Department for Business and Trade, the Government Digital Service, the Prime Minister’s office and local authorities – industry leaders including development corporations and the National Federation of Builders, infrastructure providers, universities and financial institutions like Nationwide. This unprecedented collaboration demonstrates how this Challenge is breaking down traditional silos to tackle shared challenges around infrastructure, delivery of small sites and land ownership. I look forward to following the next stages, as shortlisted teams will be invited to take part in a pitch-style bootcamp in mid-July with selected solutions announced in September. From there, selected companies and their partners will move forward to deliver scalable PropTech solutions that can transform how we approach housing delivery in support of the government’s ambitious housing targets. > Keep up to date by following the Digital Planning programme, on LinkedIn and subscribing to the newsletter.