Build 2016 Construction & Engineering Awards

2016 Construction & Engineering Awards Build 27 Company: Active Planning Leads Name: Ian McLean Email: [email protected] Website: www.planning-leads.info Address: The Old Chapel, 33 Church Street, Coggeshall, Essex, CO6 1TX Telephone: 01376 566 846 ctive Planning Leads is designed to allow businesses within the construction and home improvement industries to contact people who will soon be looking to buy the products and services that they provide. It is also designed to deliver planning leads as fast as possible, which means that our subscribers can offer their products and services long before permission is granted; by using our data they will know of all of these projects long before their competitors are even aware that these sales opportunities exist. Being fully registered with the information commissioner’s office, ICO, gives us licence to create our own copyrights. The information we deliver is usually unique to the subscriber who can chose which types of project they wish to receive and from which local plan- ning authority areas. For instance, a builder specialising in loft conversions in South London could chose and receive exactly those types of planning leads. Technologically speaking, there have been a number of new developments since we began in 1988, but the service that we provide has changed very little. The cost to our subscribers has always been much less than if they attempted to collect and collate the information themselves. The real advantage of Active Planning Leads is that the leads are delivered in excel spreadsheet format, ready for mail merging, or delivered as printed mail labels. Either way makes it quick and easy for subscribers to get their sales letters and promotions in the post when doing their own mailing. A challenge that we are currently facing is companies collecting informa- tion by ‘data harvesting’ or ‘data scraping’, whereby software is used to trawl council websites for any information they can find. Whilst it is not illegal to harvest data or illegal to sell data gathered in this way, it can put the purchaser of that data in contravention of section 47 of the copyright act, should anyone complain. Apart from this illegality, the overall quality of ‘harvested’ data is generally poor and incomplete. By creating our own databases and copyrights, under the supervision of the ICO, we ensure that our subscribers are not put in this position and make sure they receive the best possible quality data and services. Best for Construction Sales Leads 2016 - UK Active Planning Leads have been providing a planning information service since 1988, with the mission being to put subscribers in touch with potential customers in a bid to help them find valuable new business. Whether subscribers are looking for more sales, better quality sales or sales closer to home, Active Planning Leads can identify the planning applicants who will soon require their services. We spoke with Ian McLean, who told us more about the unique offering of this company. A CE160036