Warning over West Norfolk and Norwich planning portals

But now councils have issued warnings about a bug in their systems, which could allow malicious users to impersonate other people on planning portals.

People can leave comments online as part of the planning process, for example if they fear a neighbour's proposed extension will overlook their garden or they are concerned about proposals to turn the village pub into homes.

A number of recent applications around Norfolk have drawn large numbers of responses. 

These include the proposals for two industrial-scale pig and poultry farms at Methwold, near Thetford, which have so far received more than 5,000 objections.

People post on planning portals to have their say over proposed developments (Image: Chris Bishop)

Objectors left hundreds of comments after the bridge at Congham was filled in (Image: Chris Bishop)

More than 350 people, mostly from other parts of the country, objected to a retrospective planning application to fill a disused railway bridge near King's Lynn with concrete, while the National Trust's plans for a visitor centre at Morston have also drawn a high volume of objections. 

In each case, many objections appeared to have cut and pasted lines from standard template letters onto councils' planning sites.

In many other instances, comments lay bare tensions in communities over issues such as traffic and highway safety, second homes and holiday lets or the lack of local services.

Now local authorities have been warned of a bug in their public access software, which could allow people to impersonate other users and leave fake comments that appear to have been made by them.

West Norfolk council has posted a warning on its planning portal (Image: Ian Burt)

West Norfolk council, has posted a warning on its website. It says: "A vulnerability has been discovered in the comment functionality of the public access system which potentially allows a malicious user to impersonate other users and submit comments that appear as having been made by them.

"There is no compromise to user accounts or data and the malicious user is not able to access or modify any existing data.

"However, to mitigate the risk whilst a permanent fix is found, we have removed the display of the commenter's name."

A spokesman added: "While they are working on a fix we have been advised to remove the name of persons making comments as a precaution, which we have done.

West Norfolk and Norwich City councils have posted warnings on their planning portals (Image: BCKLWN/NCC)

"As a courtesy, we put up a message in case people wondered why their name did not appear when they commented. There is no compromise to user accounts or data."

They added they were not aware of any individual applications which had been affected and the problem came to light when the council was contacted by Idox, which supplies its software, last week.

Norwich City Council has posted a similar warning. It adds: "All comments submitted to Norwich City Council are reviewed by the planning team before being displayed online.

"Comments will not appear online until they have been checked by our support team which may take a few days and will not appear at all if they contain sensitive information."

People post on planning portals to have their say over proposed developments (Image: Archive)

A spokesman for the council said: "We do use Idox. We are not aware of this issue affecting Norwich City Council."

Idox said: “As a precaution, we recently informed local authorities using the Idox Public Access system that comments in the system could potentially be attributed to another commentor. There is no threat to user accounts, data access, or system security.

"We are actively working on a software resolution and expect to have it in place shortly. In the meantime, the system remains safe to use, and this issue does not impact the integrity of any data or records.”

South Norfolk and Broadland councils said they had not yet been made aware of any issues regarding comments on their planning portals.

Great Yarmouth council said it did not use Idox. North Norfolk and Breckland councils have also been contacted for comment.