About us

Designed for planners. Funded by UK Government. Powered by Unboxed.

BOPS is part of a community of local planning authorities and suppliers working together to revolutionise planning.

Designed for planners by planners

Built on data, not documents

BOPS is built specifically for UK local authority planning teams who need to process applications efficiently, consistently, and transparently. BOPS has been co-designed with planners across the country to support the way planning teams actually work.

With BOPS, you can:

  • follow planning-specific workflows, including validation, consultation, assessment, review, and publication

  • communicate with applicants clearly, quickly, and in a trackable way

  • bring consultation responses directly into the decision-making process

  • assess applications against policy and constraints in a structured, consistent format

  • automatically generate officer reports and decision notices

  • shape the system as it evolves, thanks to continuous feedback from users.

BOPS goes beyond traditional document-heavy systems by putting structured, open data at the heart of planning. BOPS:

  • reduces reliance on inaccessible documents

  • provides an open, standardised data platform

  • cuts errors and inconsistencies that cause delays and appeals

  • makes policy and process data available for real-time analysis and reporting

  • interoperates seamlessly with new and innovative products

  • frees planning officers to focus on higher-value, meaningful work

The BOPS story

BOPS was conceived in 2018 by a team of forward-thinking local planning authorities to transform the way that planning applications are processed.

Planning officers often struggled with outdated, paper-based, and fragmented back-office processes. This led to inefficiencies, delays in application processing, inconsistent data, and a lack of transparency for both internal staff and the public.

There was a need for a more modern, digital approach.

Working with Unboxed, a group of pioneering councils, used funding from the Local Digital Fund for a Discovery phase to research and identify opportunities to co-design a back office system that made planners' lives easier.

Open Digital Planning

The UK Government, via the Ministry of Communities, Housing and Local Government (MHCLG) recognised these opportunities and created Open Digital Planning. This programme offers funding and support to help councils across England to benefit from better technology, data and working practices.

Over several years, the ODP community has grown to include hundreds of councils. Unboxed works with these councils to research, codesign and test every feature in BOPS.

Through ODP, BOPS also benefits from being part of an integrated, end to end product family, from PlanX (making it easier to apply for planning) to the Digital Planning Register.

Owned by councils

We're working with MHCLG to establish an innovative business model for BOPS. We want BOPS to be:

  • owned and managed by councils

  • constantly improving through feedback loops with partners

  • integrated with the best products on the market

  • working for everyone, with upgrades developed and rolled out to all users as standard.

Fancy a conversation?
Get in touch

Use the contact form to set up an informal chat or book a demo for your team.