Why Was the PreApp Service Created?
Welcome back to the PreApp blog! In today’s article, we’re answering the question - why did we create PreApp? Don’t forget, if you’re not already, be sure to follow us across all social media platforms and subscribe to our YouTube channel for weekly video content!
PreApp took over a year to engineer and bring to the marketplace. We wanted to make sure that the system was as perfect as it could be to give you the most accurate data that we could possibly do when undertaking your pre-application submission. We wanted to make sure that we could give you the most real-time data mixed with planning opinion to give you as much certainty as possible given the relative expenditure of any subsequent planning application that you wish to do.
The Pre-Application System
In short, the principal of a pre-application submission is a good one - the pre-application system that was sought to be brought into place in local planning authorities was done under good pretences. The idea being that it gives as much certainty to a potential applicant before they undertook a lot of expenditure with regard architectural design, planning fees, etc to understand whether the cost/risk of undertaking it was worth it.
However, in principal, the entire process has been bogged down by time delays, poor quality advice and inefficiency by local planning authorities. Over recent years this has become a real problem, if you submit a pre-application to your local planning authority, you certainly cannot rely upon the timeframes that they are proposing you are going to get the return in and in fact, we inherit quite a lot of issues from angry applicants who have submitted pre-application submissions to their local planning authority and not had a response, even a year after they’ve made that submission.
Why Was PreApp Created?
We decided to create PreApp because we could foresee the problems in the marketplace and we could foresee that they were not going away. PreApp was created in order to try and streamline what we consider to be a relatively straightforward process in order to give people the advice they need as quickly and as cheaply as possible.
In running a very busy town planning practice known as NextPhase, I can see the frustrations that potential applicants have in not having the certainty that they sought from their pre-application submissions. We are trying to give the marketplace the data that they need in order to give them the certainty that they need to progress with their proposed projects.
We hope you enjoyed today’s blog article and learnt some valuable information about pre-applications. As always, please follow us across social media to stay up to date with new content and if you haven’t already, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you require any assistance with a submission, be sure to navigate to the Home page of our website and see the details there, alternatively, you can contact us any time!