Running these things every quarter is tough on people. It’s just enough time to forget what needs to be done. That’s OK.  This is a quick reminder of what you need to do to keep your data up to date:

• We want all applications received from the 1st April 2013 to today’s date (note the ‘received’ – things like PS2 reports use date ranges based on ‘determined’). This should be in a worksheet called ‘applications’
• It makes sense that you also submit the lookups you did last time. This should be in a worksheet called ‘lookups’.
• These two worksheets should be saved in an Excel workbook called ‘yourcouncil.xlsx’. Note that ‘yourcouncil’ is a specific name your council has, and it needs to be exact for the machine to make a match. Note that this must be the modern ‘xlsx’ format, not the older ‘.xls’ version
• This should be emailed to “submit@qualityframework.net”

Don’t worry about manually trying to keep the ‘lookups’ tab up to date. If (for example) you have decided to make a new type of application (eg one of the new permitted development classes) the machine will create a new line for you in your lookups tab, and describe it as ‘_missing’. You can then do a match and resubmit.

Errors we often see include

• Using a filename that makes sense to humans not machines (eg ‘application data updated for September submission’ or ‘second try.xlsx’).
• Using the wrong excel format (eg ‘council.xls’). We need the newer, xlsx format.
• Submitting only the most recent quarter. We need *all* the data all over again, because some of your older cases may now be determined

Note that some helpful people are submitting data over a longer period to help us understand the impact of the NPPF. We don’t really know what we’re going to do with this data or what sort of analysis we’re going to do yet, but the additional effort for you is almost zero so if you feel like helping out you can start your date range from the 1st April 2010.