Planning Product Features

The Planning product includes the following features to enhance your user experience in the planning process:

Pre-Consultation

The purpose of pre-consultation is to allow the applicant to review their planning proposal with municipal planning authorities and other key stakeholders, as applicable, when the planning proposal is still preliminary. This allows for the early detection of problems, constraints, and opportunities in the construction project. Pre-consultation may sometimes be required, optional, or not applicable. 

The pre-consultation process is as follows:  

  • Applicants create a pre-consultation request, upload documents that may help authorities understand their plans, and submit it via Cloudpermit to the municipal planning department.
  • During the pre-consultation, the parties usually meet for one or more meetings. Municipal planning authorities create these meeting invitations and agendas in the Cloudpermit "Pre-Consultation" workspace and send them to the appropriate parties.
  • Following the pre-consultation, the municipal planning authority creates a draft application for applicants in the "Application" workspace. In addition, all stakeholders have access to a pre-consultation report in the "Pre-Consultation" workspace.

For further information, read here.

Committee and Council Meetings

Committee and council meetings are part of the municipal planning process. They follow a strict municipality-based protocol and are held to decide on planning applications in accordance with local government policies.

Municipalities can use the Cloudpermit "Committee and Council Meetings" feature to add applications to upcoming meetings, create and share agendas and other meeting-related documents, and better manage committee and council meeting dates, agendas, and meeting packages. Furthermore, municipalities can manage and track the outcomes of these meetings.

Public Notice

This feature is intended to notify property owners within a certain radius of development projects. 

The "Public Notice" feature allows municipal authorities to manage information and tasks related to public hearings and notices of specific planning applications online. The "Public Notice" allows the authorities to do the following:

  • Utilize the radius of the buffer zone feature to locate properties and their owners.
  • Manage the citizen mailing list and receive updates on the decisions on applications.
  • Generate a templated public notice letter that can be sent to neighboring property owners and other interested stakeholders.
  • Track and share any document related to public notice.

Citizens can also self-register for the Cloudpermit "Public Notice" feature via a link or QR code to receive application decisions.

Configurable Two-Tier Approvals

Depending on the local government for which the application has been submitted, lower-tier municipalities, such as towns and villages, may require approval for the planning application from upper-tier municipalities, such as the county. 

The "Configurable Two-Tier Approvals" feature built into Cloudpermit allows municipalities to automatically route approvals to the lower or upper tier based on their application type during the approval process. The feature ensures that applications are submitted to the appropriate municipal authority while also removing the applicant's confusion about where and how to submit their applications.

Furthermore, this feature allows lower and upper-tier municipalities to collaborate and conduct a two-tier approval process; the lower tier requests approval from the upper tier.

This feature is not available for US customers.

Conditions and Comments

Conditions can mitigate any potential adverse effects of a development and allow it where it would have been necessary to refuse planning approval. 

Planning authorities can impose conditions on planning applications through Cloudpermit's "Conditions and Comments" feature. 

With Cloudpermit’s feature, when a condition is added to a workspace, it has to be cleared before the file (workspace) can be closed. This helps ensure that no conditions are missed and that they are properly cleared.

In addition to the above, when a condition is added to a planning workspace, it will show up on the property view. It will be visible to other community development departments, such as building and code and by-law enforcement.

The "Comments" feature allows planners to assign comments to various parties to the application, such as architects, engineers, and other consultants. This will notify them that a new comment has been assigned to them and that they need to respond to it.

Processing Time Calculator

The "Processing Time Calculator" feature allows planning authorities to set processing times and deadlines for each approval application type or internal target. These target times can be paused or adjusted at any time. 

Providing transparency into processing times and deadlines, this feature automatically calculates application review and decision-making deadlines for each application and displays their urgency in days on the authority's dashboard.





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