May 05, 2009 -- John Swinney, Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth in the Scottish Government and a Member of the Scottish Parliament, officially launched the Scottish Government’s new ePlanning website at the Scottish Planning Summit in Edinburgh.

The new system called ePlanning will enable citizens and professionals to create planning applications, appeal against decisions and track the progress of proposals online.

Working with IDOX PLC, 1Spatial provided a fundamental part of ePlanning that involves the exploitation of interoperable spatial technologies for online tasks such as searching, viewing and creating detailed planning application maps. The ePlanning Scotland Website provides all users with the ability to view, access, purchase and use site plans drawn from a variety of national coverage datasets such as the Ordnance Survey’s MasterMap® product and Scotland’s national gazetteer. "The initiative will cost more than £11m, said Cabinet Secretary John Swinney. "But it will save planning authorities £16.7m over the next 10 years while saving developers and others a further £43.8m", he added. He also commented that ePlanning will benefit planning authorities, local communities, planning applicants, and businesses. It will produce significant cost savings for councils and applicants, including the development industry by producing a system that is easier to use and process ", he said.

Alan Douglas, Business Solutions Director from 1Spatial remarked, The national portal represents a major step forward for planning in Scotland. It is a fine example of how national scale architectures can be spatially designed and deployed as part of mainstream business processes. The Scottish Government recognised the fundamental importance of integrated spatial capabilities from the very start of this project. It is because of their foresight they now have a nationally integrated system providing real benefits to all stakeholders.

An overview of this new service is available to view on YouTube, please use the below like to view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRcMl_uob0o