The brilliant PlanningAlerts.com (and others) strangled by Royal Mail #rmfail

Planning Alerts, a brilliant non-profit and free service that demystifies Britain's bizarre planning system, is to close following the Royal Mail's legal actions over the postcode database.

Planning Alerts relied on volunteers to help open up access to the planning data, usually hidden behind proprietary junk that wasn't designed to be shared outside the 'walled garden' in which it existed. The service let you receive information on the latest planning applications based on your location and get email alerts or RSS updates when the documents were available. You could even output it on a map via an open API that probably produced more useful information than most council staff could provide.

And now, due to the inflexibility, arrogance and small-mindedness of the *publicly owned* Royal Mail, it must close. Following legal action taken against Ernestmarples.com, a website providing access to free postcode and location data, they have no source to power the location- based system. As a not-for-proft service, they can't afford the outrageous licensing fees for the 'Postcode Address File' (PAF), provided on a commercial basis to any direct mail firm that wants to spam you.

The Royal Mail could have recognised the social good that's coming out of this project. For the first time, denizens of many local areas were able to hear about the latest information about planning applications in their area in a manner which suited them. The Royal Mail could have agreed to provide the PAF, for free perhaps as some kind of sponsorship.

But when letters from lawyers come in, you can bet your bottom dollar that the public consequences have been ill-judged, if considered at all. Then again, when the PAF was leaked to "Wikileaks" it's said that their press team asked the enquirers "Wikileaks... What's that?".

Anyway, late night rant over - check out the wider story at BBC: http://bit.ly/JWhoE

(Hat-tip @paulcockerton)

Sent from my iPhone