Guide to The Newcastle City Council Online Planning Search system

Search for, view, and comment on planning applications

• Note this guidance is also available as a pdf.

 

The landing webpage on our site is: www.newcastle.gov.uk/viewplanning

There are options there taking you to the main search page, or to view a weekly list of applications received or decided.

You don’t need to log in to view anything, but you will need to register and log in to make a comment.

• If you are having difficulties with viewing documents, logging in , or registering, it is sometimes a problem with your internet connection, or an outdated browser.  We recommend using Chrome or Firefox to access the site.

 

• Searching with address, reference or other text

• Searching By Map

• Viewing Documents

• Commenting on an Application

 

The main search page has a very comprehensive set of options to search for an application.  You can use any or a combination of these.  Some are free text, some are drop-down lists, and some are date ranges.

The easiest way to find a specific application is to put in the reference in the top left box, but it has to be the FULL reference.  The other text boxes are automatically ‘wildcard’ searches, and they’re not case sensitive so don’t worry about capital letters.  You can use these boxes to find a particular word in a proposal or address or applicant name, and no wildcard symbol is needed.
 
Press Enter or click ‘Search’ to search using the options you have selected.

If anything is found, the search results list is displayed at the bottom of the page, so scroll down.   The list is in order of Application Reference, the most recent at the top.
If there are too many results, you can narrow down your search by using more of the options, for instance a decision date from/to, or a Ward, or an application type.  Search again to see the results.

• To find a specific address such as a house on your street, search the Street Name (and any other options to narrows down your search), then in the list of results you can use your browser's built-in text search (usually Ctrl+F).  You might also want to try the map search option.

 

• TIP: there is also the Weekly Lists option in the left hand menu, to see a list of applications received, or decided, in a specific week.

Click the ‘View’ button to open up the application, in a new browser tab.  Click here to skip to the next section in this guide.

 

Using the Map Search

First, you must navigate to the area of the city you wish to search.  You can zoom in on a property, or search a wider area (which might take longer).

In the options in the top left corner:  use Rectangular Search to find all planning history within the current map view.  Alternatively, the Circular Search will put a circular buffer in the middle of the screen and will then search within that area.

After a few seconds, the search results will be visible on screen, shown as red boundaries around properties.  If you see no red boundaries, then there is no planning history in that area.

For more information, click on any of the red shapes to show a pop-up box which tells you the reference, address, and description.  Click the 'View' option to open the planning record in a new tab.  There may be more than one application on the same site, so scroll down the list in the pop-up box to see more.  It is in order with the more recent at the top.

You can Save a search in order to easily repeat it in future.  You will need to be logged in as a registered user.  This option is in the options in the top left of the map, you may need to scroll down in the list to see it underneath the Circular Searches options.

 

Viewing an application.

You should see the top section of the screen is the applications details, with the application type, address, proposal details, applicant, decision if it has been made, the relevant dates, and the Planning Officer dealing with it.

Underneath that you will normally see a map of the area as a snapshot image – the proposal area has a blue border.  (note that this will not normally be available on older applications received before March 2020)

The next section is Documents.

If you cannot see any documents, or the ones you expected to see are not there, they might not yet have been made available by the case administrator.  Please contact the planning officer by email if known, or planning.control@newcastle.gov.uk.

NOTE that for applications older than 4 years ago, these documents are still being backloaded into our system and may take another few weeks to be fully available. Please contact the planning officer by email if known, or planning.control@newcastle.gov.uk.

• On a large application where there are many documents, it may be more difficult to find what you’re looking for.  You can use the text search on your browser to find the name or description of the document on the page and go to it.  This is normally Ctrl+F.

The next section is Representations.  This is all the comments that have been made on this application by other members of the public, and consultees.

To Comment on an Application:

Public comments (including postal addresses) will normally be online and visible to anyone else viewing the application, but your signature and email address are not displayed.  More information about this is here.
The bottom section of the screen is ‘Make a Representation’.

You will need to log in to the system in order to make a comment.  Please Register your details if you haven’t already.   The option to login is at the bottom of an application page, or the top left of the screen.  You can register yourself from there.

• TIP: when you log in, the website takes you back to the Main Homepage, and by default the Building Control section (this is different to Planning).  So you will have to navigate back to planning.  If you ‘Go Back’ a couple of pages, you will get back to the application page you were on.  Alternatively, you can right-click on the Login link and Open In New Tab.  Refresh the application page to now see the option to submit a comment.

Select whether you Support or Object to the application, or if it is a General Comment.

You can type your comments into the text box below that. 

• To make the box bigger, drag the bottom right corner. 
• You can copy/paste text into here from another source such as a word document, if you wish to type up your text somewhere else first.
• Your browser might have a built in spellchecker, if you want to make use of that.
• You can attach a file to your comment, or alternatively instead of a comment in the text box submit your comment within a file such as a pdf or word document, if you prefer.  Photographs and formatted statements are permitted; as with text comments, they are not made available online.
• NOTE that if you want to attach a file only, you do have to add some text into the text box so that the system accepts your submission; you can just put in something like "See attached file".
• Click the SUBMIT button.
• Note that you will not normally be informed of the outcome of the decision; please refer back to this webpage for updates on the progress on the case.  The Decision will be available as a document as soon as it is published.

 

• If you have any problems with things not displaying as expected, you could try with a different internet browser, or updating the one you are using.

For any difficulties or further questions with the system, or you feel some information is difficult to find, please contact the case officer if known, or planning.control@newcastle.gov.uk for guidance.