Digital Planning Register

Try Before You Buy

Overview

The public planning register used by real UK councils
9 councils configured • Search & map views • GOV.UK Design System • 10-minute guided walkthrough

Learning Artifact: This is a pre-deployed demonstration environment for learning and exploration, not a production-ready product.

The Digital Planning Register is the open-source public-facing application built by TPXimpact as part of the Open Digital Planning ecosystem. It gives residents a unified, accessible way to search and view planning applications across councils — connecting to BOPS back-office systems via API.

Currently used by 9 UK councils including Camden, Lambeth, and Southwark.

Important After requesting your session, the environment takes approximately 8-12 minutes to deploy. Once ready, the walkthrough will guide you through browsing councils and searching planning applications.

What you’ll explore

Register Features

Feature	What it does
Council selection	Browse and select from configured councils
Application search	Search by reference, address, or description with filters
Application details	Maps, progress timeline, documents, comments, and decisions
AWS architecture	Stateless ECS Fargate deployment with CloudFront HTTPS

Infrastructure

Component	AWS Service
Compute	AWS Fargate (ECS)
Load Balancer	Application Load Balancer
HTTPS	Amazon CloudFront
Logging	Amazon CloudWatch

Getting started

Once you select “Try this now” above, your session environment will begin deploying automatically.

What happens next:
1. Your environment deploys (~8-12 minutes)
2. Follow the walkthrough to find the register URL
3. Browse councils, search applications, and explore the map views

Preview the scenario Preview the walkthrough

Why this matters for local government

Public transparency

Residents search planning applications instantly
No account creation required
Map views with site boundaries
Fewer phone calls and FOI requests

Multi-council design

One register serves multiple councils
Each council maintains their own BOPS back-office
Consistent, familiar experience for residents
Shared development costs

Stateless simplicity

No database to manage or back up
Data always fresh from BOPS APIs
Easy to deploy, scale, and maintain
Low operational overhead

GOV.UK Design System

WCAG 2.2 AA accessible by default
User-tested design patterns
Familiar to government service users
No UX research needed

About the Digital Planning Register

The Digital Planning Register is built by TPXimpact as part of the Open Digital Planning (ODP) ecosystem. It’s the public-facing counterpart to BOPS.

Part of the ODP ecosystem • BOPS (back office) • Digital Planning Register (public) • PlanX (submissions)

The problem

Residents can’t easily find planning applications
Each council has a different system
No consistent search experience
Planning information is hard to access

The solution

Unified register across councils
Search by reference, address, or description
Map views with site boundaries
GOV.UK Design System accessibility

The outcome

87% faster search times for residents
£45k annual savings (estimated, reduced FOI/phone enquiries)
Consistent experience across councils
Better public engagement

“The Digital Planning Register gives residents instant access to planning applications, reducing the burden on planning teams while improving transparency.”

— Open Digital Planning programme

Constraints

Budget limit: $50 maximum spend (sufficient for extensive exploration)
Duration: 24 hours from activation
Purpose: Evaluation only (non-production use)
No cost to you - the budget is provided by NDX:Try

Resource Lifecycle Warning: All resources in your sandbox will be automatically deleted when your session time expires OR when the budget limit is reached (whichever comes first). Do not store important data in this environment.

How this was built

This scenario is built with open source infrastructure as code using AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit). The Digital Planning Register application is the same Next.js codebase used in production by UK councils.

View the source code on GitHub (opens in new tab)

Explore more scenarios

Back Office Planning System (BOPS) - The back-office system that powers the register
Planning AI - Intelligent planning application document analysis
LocalGov Drupal with AI - AI-enhanced content management for councils
Council Chatbot - AI-powered resident services chatbot
Empty AWS Sandbox - Start fresh with a clean AWS environment

Learn more

Troubleshooting

Try button not working? Make sure you’re signed in to NDX
Did not receive credentials? Check your spam folder, or wait a few minutes
Cannot access the scenario? Ensure you’re using the correct AWS region (us-east-1)
Environment still deploying? The register takes 8-12 minutes — check the CloudFormation stack status
Councils not showing? The demo uses test council data — real council data requires BOPS API configuration

Support

For technical issues during your sandbox session, contact the NDX team at ndx@dsit.gov.uk.