Planning Authoring, Publishing and Consultation Management Software

Wakefield Council is considering procurement options for Planning Authoring, Publishing and Consultation Management Software. The purpose of this market consultation is to ascertain the interest of any qualified providers and to understand what services are available in the current market. Completion of the questionnaire and any involvement in the market engagement exercise does not confer any right or expectation that a supplier will be selected for any contract should a procurement exercise be undertaken.

The Planning Policy and Environment team at Wakefield Council is responsible for authoring and consulting on a range of policies and guidance documents. These include the statutory development plan for the district (the Local Plan) as well as Supplementary Planning Documents (SPD), Design Codes and Conservation Area Appraisals. To undertake this work effectively, the council needs a system which allows collaborative authoring (more than one officer can amend the documents simultaneously) as well as enabling stakeholders to comment on individual sections of the document. This enables effective analysis by each document section. It is also important for the system to contain a mailing list of interested parties, enable interested parties to register via the website and enable notifications of consultation events to be sent to such parties. Interested parties would have an account within the software for them to draft comments and eventually submit them to the consultation. Once submitted, the system would need to be able to display comments on the website next to the relevant section of the draft policy document.