Filtering Planning Applications

Filtering Planning Applications

We are very enthused that South Somerset District Council (SSDC)- our Local Planning Authority, and a recent adopter of XMAP - has started exporting Planning Applications into Parish Online:   hooray!!  More than a decade's worth of data:   delicious!  And the filter system works well:  to see the applications for 2022, one can filter on those 'keyval' records which start with "22/", and bam, we are immediately seeing only those records which were created in 2022.

However, parish councils are mostly interested in dealing with "open" applications (ie neither "approved" nor "rejected") which may well cover more than one year.  However, that is not selectable with the current filter system, which only permits one rule (eg show everything in 2022, which means that 2021 applications that are still open are not visible), and it means that we are still seeing every application in 2022 regardless of whether they are still "open" - though a busy council meeting has no desire to look at applications which have long been approved or rejected.

Moreover, with Parish Layers, it is simple to colour-code our manually-created applications so that the approved are in green, the rejected are in red, and those awaiting a decision are a delightful purple.  This makes Visualisation (one of the great strengths of Parish Online) very powerful.

Given that the data imported from SSDC counts as a non-Parish Layer, it is not possible to apply Style to it, nor is it possible to make use of the really helpful multiple parameter filter tool that Table View provides.  And certainly, with the initial data download, the system seems to be ignoring parish boundaries:  we are able to see applications in surrounding parishes that fall under the aegis of SSDC as their Local Planning Authority as well - an unwanted distraction.

As things stand at the moment, then, the long-awaited arrival of Planning Applications directly into Parish Online is a bit disappointing - its usefulness so far seems to be restricted to showing whether there are any applications in the system that have been overlooked in the manually-created Parish layers.

Is there any way that Table View or Style can be permitted for certain approved non-Parish layers, please, such as those from the SSDC?   Or at least putting that multi-parameter filter facility from Table View into effect on the current single parameter filter that is enabled on non-Parish layers?

Or can anyone offer another way of making only those desired records visible?

Just a thought for consideration, that could single-handedly resolve the issue: would Geoxphere consider another frequently sought-after service, please:   if we could do a Data Extract from the SSDC data now within Parish Online (currently not allowed?) to a .csv file, and then import that back into our existing Parish Layers for planning applications, then all the manual work of creating those planning applications in a Parish Layer is obviated - all that needs to be done is to complete the locally important information, such as when the Parish Council considered the application, and what their decision was.


Thank you,

Graham