For Parish Councils in Cornwall to download all planning documents for a given planning application so that they can be viewed offline.
Update 11th April 2016
Cornwall Council has now introduced a 'Download All Documents' button on their online planning portal. Please use that facility instead of this one. It was the lack of this facility that prompted Snapshot to be developed.
The Snapshot tool will remain open as some parish councils are using it. We will contact them individually.
Thanks for the support. We seem to have 'nudged' Cornwall Council in the right direction.
Why use it? View the planning documents on a laptop in your council meeting even if you have no power supply or internet access. Project the screen so members of the public can see what you are talking about. See more detail and colour than printed copies of the plans. See the latest documents (up to the point you made the snapshot). This tool automates the download of all the documents for you.
Retrieval times. It is slow partly because it is friendly to Cornwall Council's website but mostly because the Cornwall Council website is slow. The time it takes to retrieve all the documents for a particular application can be several minutes. Large ones can take hours. Please be patient it will keep going until it is done. In fact it will keep going even if you turn your computer off - just return and enter the planning reference again and it should be ready.
Extracting and Unzipping. Since all the planning documents are separate files they need to be bundled up in a package for you to easily download. This package is called a ZIP archive and to browse the planning documents you need to extract the files first. You don't need to install any new software to do this as your computer can probably do it for you. Use these links to get specific help on extracting / unzipping for Windows 8.1, Windows 7, other operating systems (including Windows Vista, XP, Mac OS, and Linux).
iPad? You can use this tool on iPad but you need additional software for handling the Zip file. It should work if you have previously installed the paid version of WinZip App for iPad and extract the snapshot files to 'My Files'. You may not be able to view the files on your iPad because of limitations on the iPad browser.
Browsing the documents. After the package has been unzipped it will appear as a folder (with the name of the Planning Case Reference) on your computer. Open this folder and double click on the file called 'index.html'. This will open your browser and it will look exactly like the Cornwall Council website except it will work offline (and considerably faster).
Snapshot Planning Tool version 0.99d (beta)
Provided as a service without warranty by Cllr Dean Jenkins, Grampound with Creed Parish Council
Made in Cornwall
With thanks to web services provided by Agnate.