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Walkthrough Complete - Digital Planning Register

You’ve completed the Digital Planning Register walkthrough

Walkthrough complete

You've explored the Digital Planning Register used by UK councils

You've just experienced the Digital Planning Register — the same open-source application used by councils like Camden, Lambeth, and Southwark to give residents transparent access to planning applications. In 10 minutes, you've seen what would take weeks of procurement and evaluation.

What you've learned

🔍 Public transparency

Residents can search and view planning applications instantly, without creating accounts or navigating complex council websites. Consultation dates, documents, and decisions are all in one place.

Value: Fewer FOI requests, reduced phone enquiries, better public engagement

🏛 Multi-council design

One register serves multiple councils. Each council maintains their own BOPS back-office, but residents get a consistent, familiar experience across all participating authorities.

Value: Shared development costs, consistent UX, faster adoption

Stateless simplicity

No database, no cache, no file storage. The register reads everything from BOPS APIs. This makes deployment simple, scaling easy, and maintenance minimal. Nothing to back up, nothing to migrate.

Value: Low operational overhead, easy disaster recovery, zero data management

🔧 GOV.UK Design System

Built with the GOV.UK Design System, ensuring WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility. Every component has been user-tested, and the patterns are familiar to anyone who's used a government service.

Value: Accessible by default, trusted design patterns, no UX research needed

Production readiness

This demo runs the same codebase used by live councils. For a full deployment, you'd additionally want:

Feature Demo status Production requirement
Custom domain CloudFront URL planning.yourcouncil.gov.uk
BOPS API External council APIs Your own BOPS instance API
OS Maps Optional API key Full OS Vector Tiles integration
Auto-scaling Single task ECS auto-scaling based on traffic
Monitoring CloudWatch Logs CloudWatch Alarms, dashboards, SNS alerts

Good news: Because the register is stateless, the path from demo to production is straightforward — it's mostly about connecting it to your own BOPS API and configuring a custom domain. The application itself is production-ready.

Next steps

Generate Evidence Pack

Create your business case with what you've learned. Perfect for committee papers.

Generate Evidence Pack

Return to Digital Planning Register

Review deployment options, costs, and technical details.

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