Hartley Wintney, May 12th, 2010 - Today sees the launch of Planning Required (www.planningrequired.com) a new online service that enables anyone who needs to produce a site plan, for a planning application in a few minutes. Planning Required is backed by aerial photography specialists Getmapping, a licensed reseller of Ordnance Survey Maps which are provided by the service. To celebrate the launch, Planning Required is giving away a pair of VIP tickets for the Hampshire Rose Bowl on 14th August 2010, to see both the Semi-Finals and the Final of the Friends Provident Twenty20 Cup. The winners will also be invited to the Sir Ian Botham Lunch.

Expected to appeal to architects, developers and in fact anyone that needs to submit a planning application to a Local Authority, Planning Required provides a simple three step process that can be completed in minutes. For a limited time, the service will be offered with a free aerial photograph which can be used for context.

As an alternative Planning Required also offers a premium service which provides a full map preview and the ability to use online tools to mark out areas and annotate the map, particularly useful for picking out precise details and ensuring that the application is easy to understand and interpret. In both cases the maps can be delivered by post or downloaded immediately as high resolution PDF files. Maps come in three different scales dependent on the Local Authority requirement: 1:500, 1:1250, 1:2500.

“We have launched Planning Required because we know that there is a demand for a simple, no fuss service that is not buried within the pages of a website, said Chris Kelly, Getmapping’s Marketing Manager. People are busy and want to get things done as quickly as possible. With Planning Required you can be in and out of the site and have downloaded a plan within a few minutes. This is the way online services should be, continued Kelly.