Planning Portal Building Control service launches

TerraQuest, the operator of Planning Portal, has launched its new Building Control service.

The portal will offer features to simplify designers' working lives, combining planning and building control under a single sign-on with easy data transfer and a payment nomination facility, Planning Portal says.

The new platform will offer practices direct access to all their planning and building control applications in one place, while also providing a host of usability and interface enhancements. It will also allow practices to pull information through from existing or approved planning applications to pre-populate elements of building control applications.

Like Planning Portal, the new Building Control service is based on TerraQuest's properietary KeyChain software platform. To enable the platform to operate on a self-sustaining basis without public funding, a service fee will apply to each application, with an introductory rate at launch of £21 including VAT.

Geoff Keal, CEO at TerraQuest, said:

Our new Building Control platform promises to be a major step forward for architectural practices, substantially reducing the administrative burden that surrounds development. Planning applicants have already benefited from key usability enhancements and so it made sense to extend these to the Building Control application process with a new portal based on our proven KeyChain platform.

The move to the new platform has in part being prompted by the need for greater agility in adapting to changes in health and safety legislation, so that applicants can make compliant submissions more easily.”