Planning Alerts has been a useful website- once you register on it, you automatically get an email sent to you when there’s a planning application near your home. But we’ve had the following message from the people who run it:
As some of you may already have spotted in the news, Planning Alerts has
been effected by legal action by the Royal Mail:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7700621.stm
We are left with the choice of paying the Royal Mail up to ?4,000 a
year for access to the postcode database and either running a much less
accurate and useful service or shutting PlanningAlerts down altogether.
If are concerned about this, please consider doing the following:
— Write to your MP —
Tom Watson MP has tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament calling on
the Royal Mail to allow non-profit organisations to use the postcode
database for free. Please write to your MP asking them to sign this
Early Day Motion (number EDM 2000) and protest at the actions of The
Royal Mail.
You can write to your MP here: http://marples.writetothem.com/
— Sign the petition —
Nearly 1,200 people have so far signed a petition on the Prime
Minister’s website, please add your name:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nfppostcodes/
— Blog / write to your local paper–
Please consider writing a blog post in support of PlanningAlerts or
writing to your local paper.
Yours,
The PlanningAlerts.com team