UK Planning Scraper — Planning Application Data & Pre-Market Leads

Scrape UK council planning applications in two modes: one council's Idox PublicAccess portal for the deepest per-application record (documents list, all key dates), or a nationwide sweep of all ~417 UK planning authorities via the PlanIt aggregator — ideal for daily monitoring of new applications anywhere in England, Scotland and Wales. Extract reference, address, proposal, applicant/agent, status, decision, dates and documents. The cheapest planning-lead actor on the Store at $0.005 per application.

Main Use Cases

• Pre-market development leads — new planning applications are public before any development is announced; capture applicant + agent contact details the day an application is validated.
• Planning application monitoring — daily "new applications anywhere in the UK" sweeps with filters by council, keyword, type, state and size.
• Solar & energy project tracking — keyword watch (e.g. solar farm, wind turbine) across all councils.
• Property & construction market research — application volumes, decisions and approval rates by council/region.
• Address-level due diligence — pull the full planning history of a specific site or postcode.

How It Works

Idox mode drives the council's PublicAccess portal (e.g. publicaccess.leeds.gov.uk/online-applications) over plain HTTP: session cookie + CSRF token, advanced search, paged results, then all detail tabs (summary, details, dates, documents) fetched in parallel per application. PlanIt mode queries the public PlanIt aggregator API (planit.org.uk/api/applics/json) with council, keyword, type, state, size and date filters; results are deduplicated and optionally matched back to each council's docs tab. No browser, no Cloudflare wall — plain HTTP/JSON, so a nationwide daily sweep costs cents.

Farm Pre-Market Development Deals With Applicant & Agent Data

Every row includes the applicant and agent (name, company, address) — the lead-generation gold — plus status, decision dates and documents. With includeDocuments on, application-form PDFs (which often contain direct contact details) are saved as rows in a separate per-run documents dataset, with the dataset ID published in the run's OUTPUT record.

Monitor Every UK Council in One Run

The all-councils (PlanIt) mode sweeps ~417 planning authorities nationally — no need to know each portal's URL. Filter with authorities (e.g. Leeds, Cornwall), searchQueries (e.g. solar, extension), appType, appState, appSize and a rolling recentDays window for daily monitoring.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
source	select	No	idox	idox (single council portal) or planit (all ~417 councils nationwide).
portalUrl	string	Idox mode	—	Council's Idox portal base URL, e.g. https://publicaccess.leeds.gov.uk/online-applications.
councilName	string	No	—	Optional label for Idox rows.
authorities	array	No	[]	PlanIt mode — restrict to named councils; empty = all UK authorities.
searchQueries	array	No	[]	PlanIt mode — keywords vs proposal/type (e.g. solar, extension).
appType	select	No	—	Full, Outline, Amendment, Conditions, Trees, Advertising, Heritage, Listed, Telecoms, Certificate, Other.
appState	select	No	—	Undecided, Permitted, Rejected, Withdrawn, Conditions, Referred, Unresolved, Other.
appSize	select	No	—	Small, Medium, Large.
recentDays	integer	No	—	PlanIt — only applications from the last N days (newest first).
startDate/endDate	string	No	—	PlanIt — validated date range YYYY-MM-DD.
caseType	string	No	—	Idox development type code (FU, OT, RM, LI, DHH, COND, ADV, TR, MOD…).
caseStatus	select	No	—	Idox — Current, Decided, Unknown.
caseDecision	string	No	—	Idox decision code (A, R, GRA, REF…).
validatedFrom/validatedTo	string	No	—	Idox — validated date range DD/MM/YYYY.
decisionFrom/decisionTo	string	No	—	Idox — decision date range DD/MM/YYYY.
address, description, applicantName, agent, reference, ward, parish	string	No	—	Idox keyword filters.
maxItems	integer	No	1000	Max applications (free tier 10, hard max 5000).
maxConcurrency	integer	No	10	Detail pages fetched in parallel (max 50).
includeDocuments	boolean	No	false	Fetch + save each application's documents (one row per document).
proxy	object	No	off	Recommended for large all-councils runs.

Example Input

{
  "source": "planit",
  "searchQueries": ["solar farm"],
  "recentDays": 7,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Example Output

{
  "source": "planit",
  "council": "North Northamptonshire",
  "reference": "26/02688/HFUL",
  "address": "14 Church Lane, Irthlingborough, NN29 7AW",
  "postcode": "NN29 7AW",
  "proposal": "Two-storey side extension and single-storey rear extension",
  "status": "Current",
  "decision": "",
  "applicationValidated": "2026-09-21",
  "applicationType": "Full Planning Application",
  "applicantName": "J. Smith",
  "appSize": "Small",
  "appState": "Undecided",
  "documentCount": 3,
  "url": "https://www.planit.org.uk/planapplic/..."
}

With includeDocuments on, each document is saved as its own row in a separate per-run documents dataset (reference, applicationUrl, documentType, description, publicationDate, downloadUrl), and the run's OUTPUT record always contains the dataset ID and URL.

Key Dates & Documents for Due Diligence

applicationValidated, determinationDeadline, decisionMadeDate, decisionIssuedDate, plus ward/parish, app size band and coordinates. includeDocuments gives you every published document with type, date and direct PDF download link — usable for underwriting checks and planning-history research.

Integrations & Automation

• Apify API — feed applications into a CRM, lead pipeline or monitoring dashboard.
• Scheduling — daily nationwide sweeps (recentDays: 1) or per-council daily checks with validatedFrom/validatedTo.
• Webhooks — alert on new applications in a council or keyword.
• Export — JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML.

Recommended schedule: daily with recentDays: 1 (nationwide) or validatedFrom = yesterday (single council).

Related Actors

• UK Planning Applications (PlanIt) — all-UK planning applications via the PlanIt aggregator.
• UK Planning Applications Scraper – All Councils — nationwide coverage with architect-firm extraction.
• UK Council Planning Applications Monitor — scheduled Idox/Northgate monitoring with onlyNew dedupe.
• Ireland Planning Applications — all Irish planning authorities with full document index.
• UK Planning Applications Scraper — 400+ council portals coverage.

FAQ

Why use this actor instead of a UK planning API?

Paid planning APIs (e.g. PlanningAPI UK, PlanWire, Searchland) charge per lookup and require subscription contracts. The government's official Planning Data API (planning.data.gov.uk) covers England only and its planning-application dataset is still in development. This actor scrapes the public council portals and the PlanIt aggregator directly — no API key, no contract, England + Scotland + Wales in one run, at $0.005/application.

What are alternatives to this actor / planning data?

• devon_gtme/uk-planning-applications-planit — PlanIt-based, $0.02/result.
• memo23/uk-planning-applications-scraper — all councils, $0.01/result.
• illehius/uk-planning-monitor — scheduled monitoring actor.
• Paid APIs: PlanningAPI UK, PlanWire, Searchland; open data: planning.data.gov.uk (England).

How can I monitor one council daily?

Use idox mode with portalUrl set to your council's PublicAccess portal and schedule a daily run with validatedFrom = yesterday, validatedTo = today.

What is the best way to catch new solar farm applications?

Run planit mode with searchQueries: ["solar farm"] and recentDays: 1 daily — every large-scale solar application lands in the dataset as it appears.

How do I get applicant contact details?

Enable includeDocuments — the application-form PDFs often contain the applicant/agent's contact details and are saved with direct download URLs in the documents dataset.

SEO Keywords

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For AI Agents & LLM Apps

• Purpose: given a source (idox or planit), council/portal filters and an optional date window, returns one row per UK planning application with reference, address, proposal, status, dates and applicant/agent data; with includeDocuments on, each document is a separate row in a per-run documents dataset.
• Minimal input:

{ "source": "planit", "recentDays": 7, "maxItems": 100 }

• Variant — single council (Idox):

{ "source": "idox", "portalUrl": "https://publicaccess.leeds.gov.uk/online-applications", "validatedFrom": "01/09/2026", "validatedTo": "22/09/2026", "maxItems": 100 }

• Variant — keyword watch with documents:

{ "source": "planit", "searchQueries": ["solar farm"], "includeDocuments": true, "maxItems": 200 }

• Output field list (applications dataset): source, council, reference, address, postcode, proposal, status, decision, applicationValidated, applicationType, applicantName, agentName, agentCompanyName, agentAddress, ward, parish, determinationDeadline, decisionMadeDate, decisionIssuedDate, appSize, appState, lat, lng, documentCount, url.
• Documents dataset field list: reference, applicationUrl, documentType, description, publicationDate, downloadUrl.

Behaviors an agent should know:

• source: "idox" requires portalUrl; source: "planit" ignores it and sweeps all councils unless authorities is set.
• recentDays overrides startDate/endDate in PlanIt mode.
• Hard cap: one keyword×authority combination is limited to ~5,000 PlanIt records — split wide queries by council or keyword.
• includeDocuments adds the separate documents dataset and triggers the documents-fetched billing event; the applications dataset always has documentCount.
• Some Idox portals reject broad searches ("Too many results") — narrow the date range.
• Billing: pay-per-event — result $0.005/application, documents-fetched $0.005/document (only with includeDocuments), + Actor Start ~$0.00005.

Legal & Compliance Disclaimer

Planning applications are public records published by UK councils under the Town and Country Planning regime. This actor reads public data at normal volumes — no login bypass, no private systems. Users are responsible for respecting each council's terms and rate limits, and for complying with UK data-protection law when using applicant/agent contact data. Data should be used for legitimate business purposes (development research, lead generation, due diligence) in line with applicable law.