Rob Krzyszowski
February 25, 2026
A guest post, by Rob Krzyszowski MRTPI
Director of Planning & Building Standards, Environment & Resident Experience
Haringey Council
In 2012 Haringey was named as the worst planning authority and is now seen as one of the best, having won the Local Authority Team of the Year award at the 2024 Planning Awards, and being recognised by an independent Planning Advisory Service Peer Challenge as having been on a “dramatic journey of improvement”.
A key part of that journey has been digital transformation. This has helped us reduce our call on the Council’s budget whilst increasing efficiency and maintaining a strong performance.
Having a clear view of performance and financial information of the service is crucial. The ‘dashboards’ as part of the Arcus Global solution, which we moved to in 2022, have been invaluable in providing the up-to-date management information so that the commerciality of the service can be tracked and managed.
This is important for Planning in terms of maintaining a good level of service and meeting government performance targets, but is also crucial for the Building Control service which operates in a competitive commercial environment, competing with private Registered Building Control Approvers.
What’s on the horizon?
Planning authorities are going to need to continue to become more commercial in the future with the introduction of Local Fee Setting for Cost Recovery for Development Management in the Planning & Infrastructure Act 2025. This will allow councils to set their own fees, rather than being set nationally. During 2026 it is expected there will be lots of detailed regulations and guidance published on what is precisely meant by cost recovery and the expected levels of service, so having a clear digital audit trail on all of this will be even more important.
Further rounds of funding for programmes like the Digital Planning Fund and PropTech Funds (of which Haringey is part of) are also likely in coming months and years. Particularly, there is likely to be a continued push to more consistent data standards for planning information so that national monitoring, systems and reporting can be further enhanced. National data standards will also help the development of Artificial Intelligence in planning and building control. Without a consistent baseline data set and standards, it will be hard to ‘roll out’ certain AI applications nationally.
Data standards will also continue to grow in importance for Building Control, with the current reporting requirements to the Building Safety Regulator, and the government’s consultation on a new Single Construction Regulator saying that “digitising services, data and insights will be crucial”.
2026 will also see the national introduction of the new statutory Building Safety Levy to be paid by developments above certain size thresholds. Digital systems will need to adapt to deal with the collection and monitoring of this to meet statutory requirements. This will be on top of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) and Section 106 Planning Obligations (S106) which are also partly being reformed in London from 2026 under ‘emergency’ measures from the Government and Greater London Authority to support housebuilding in London.
Paul Langridge, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Arcus Global, adds “Haringey Council has shown it is a very forward-thinking council that takes digital transformation seriously. We’re excited to be working with such an innovative council with so many ideas and so much ambition; and look forward to continuing to work in partnership to support the digital planning agenda.”