Our customers

To simplify content delivery the Portal separates customers into three main groups:

• Government users,
• Planning Professionals and
• Citizens.

Although this does not map exactly to every user it has enabled the Portal to develop tools and services for particular needs.

Government Users

Ranging from front-line staff within local planning authorities to government policy officials within Communities and beyond. Despite their broad interests recent surveys conducted by the portal assert that, users highly value Portal services in a similar way, with e-news and information regarding policy circulars featuring as most frequently used services.

Planning Professionals

Planning professionals make up a significant portion of our users and include planning consultants, architects, surveyors, builders and lawyers. These users particularly value our online application service, planning application register, DPD maps and LDF documents and e-news service.

Citizens

Despite very little targeted marketing to date citizens still make up to 40% of our customers, sub-dividing generally into those who are considering submitting a planning application and those who are not. The first group tend to utilise guidance around how to submit an application, while the remainder are more likely to be interested in the planning application register, Local Development Plans/Frameworks and a local authority’s strategy or future vision.

Traffic

By March 2007 the Portal was receiving more than 379,000 visits per month from almost 200,000 visitors. The objective for 2007/08 will see this grow to more than 0.5m visits.

Traffic by user type: