The Deputy Prime Minister has unveiled a package of measures to empower SME housebuilders to build out smaller sites faster. The Digital Planning programme’s £1.2 million PropTech Innovation Challenge is one of the initiatives included – designed to accelerate housing delivery across England by inviting tech innovators to partner with local authorities and developers to create cutting-edge solutions for small site development.
Innovation was sparked at the Local Government Innovation Hackathon, where 150 planners, technologists and digital leaders collaborated to solve real planning challenges. MHCLG proudly co-organised the event with Government Digital Service, Incubator for AI and Open Digital Planning, reimagining planning services through this hands-on approach.
The first-ever end-to-end digital planning product pilots have been launched across four local planning authorities. The pilots integrate the new products into a unified system to streamline the planning process. Early results are promising and demonstrate how digital innovation is creating a more efficient, transparent planning system for both local authorities and applicants.
Find out how the Funding Service transformed a complex monitoring spreadsheet into a user-friendly digital form, helping to reduce admin burden for local authorities and improve data quality for policy colleagues.
From launching their second grant 2 years ago to 5 grants in a single week, the MHCLG Funding Service has come a long way. Hear from grant relationship manager Craig Bevington on how the team supports cost-effective, consistent and user-focused grant delivery.
The way citizens access public services is evolving, and GOV.UK One Login, a secure and unified sign-in system, is central to this transformation. The Local Digital team is launching a discovery phase to understand how One Login could benefit local government by addressing challenges in identity checks and authentication. Learn more and find out how to get involved.
As part of our work to modernise England's planning system we have been collaborating with over 40 organisations to draft new planning application data specifications which will help to revolutionise how planning data is structured and exchanged between local authorities and software providers. Whether you're a planning officer, developer, or technology provider, we’re now seeking wider input to review and refine our baseline specifications to help build a planning system that's truly fit for the 21st century.
Tom Smith, Director of the AI and Advanced Analytics Directorate at MHCLG, highlights the push for AI adoption, digital transformation and cyber resilience in councils, and the exciting opportunities to make progress in these areas through the work of Local Digital.
Innovative pilots funded by the Digital Planning PropTech (property technology) Innovation Fund have given us key insights about building citizen trust, community cohesion and bridging generational divides. We were able to share these learnings at the recent 25th Belgo-British Conference, and come away with a few more.
The Common Tools as a Service team is responsible for building standardised, reliable and reusable tools and platforms for everyone in MHCLG. They help teams to be more efficient, deliver quickly and reduce operational costs. In this post, they share what they're doing to make SharePoint pages easier to navigate and more accessible.
