UK Planning & Building Control Applications Scraper

Weekly Building Control and Planning application lists from UK council Idox Public Access portals, normalised into one flat schema across councils — including the Building Control register no other Apify actor covers.

You never pay for a failed run. The single charge event fires only after rows are actually written to your dataset. Empty or errored runs cost $0.

What you get

One row per application, identical schema for every council:

field	meaning
council, council_name, portal_host	which council's register
register_type	building_control or planning
reference	council application reference (stable id)
proposal	description of works as published
address	site address as published
status	status at harvest time
event_type / event_date	list event: deposited (BC) / validated (planning) / decided / …
week_start	week label of the weekly list
key_val	portal key — dedupe across runs on this (or reference)
detail_url	public portal page for the application
harvested_at	UTC harvest timestamp

Deduplicate across runs on key_val + council (or reference + council).

Covered councils (v0.2)

12 councils, every portal live-verified end-to-end (form → list → rows). Building Control + Planning on the same Idox portal: Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Tameside, Bury, Sefton, St Helens, Solihull, Cheltenham, Luton, Cheshire West and Chester. Newham publishes Planning only.

Request a council by opening an Issue — Idox Public Access portals are template-driven and onboarding is fast.

Input example

{
  "councils": ["leeds"],
  "registers": ["building_control"]
}

Both fields accept arrays; run several councils and registers in one call. Rows from all councils land in one dataset with the identical schema.

Sample output (real run, 2026-09-14)

Rendered from an unedited platform dataset — councils ["leeds","tameside"], register building_control, week of 07 Sep 2026, capped at 15 rows per council (30 rows total, each billed at $0.02):

Every cell comes from run hmgDhfUdGdbzWSa7w (2026-09-14) — the dataset only rendered as a table. The log's honest cap warning is visible in the run itself: portals listed 190 (leeds) and 23 (tameside) applications for that week; delivery stopped at maxRowsPerCouncil=15.

Raw JSON row from that same run:

[
  {
    "council": "leeds",
    "council_name": "Leeds City Council",
    "portal_host": "publicaccess.leeds.gov.uk",
    "register_type": "building_control",
    "reference": "26/65291/NICEIC",
    "proposal": "Install one or more new circuits",
    "address": "54 St Margarets Road Horsforth Leeds LS18 5BG",
    "status": "",
    "event_type": "deposited",
    "event_date": "2026-09-11",
    "week_start": "07 Sep 2026",
    "key_val": "TL886NJBKR400",
    "detail_url": "https://publicaccess.leeds.gov.uk/online-applications/buildingControlDetails.do?keyVal=TL886NJBKR400&activeTab=summary",
    "harvested_at": "2026-09-14T02:33:45+00:00"
  }
]

Use with the Apify MCP server

Works out of the box with Apify's MCP server (@apify/actors-mcp-server) — scrape planning data straight from Claude, Cursor or any MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@apify/actors-mcp-server",
               "halobartku/uk-planning-building-control-scraper"]
    }
  }
}

Pricing — and why it's $0.02 per application

actor	per-application price	registers
illehius/uk-planning-monitor	$0.050 / application found	planning only
memo23/uk-planning-applications-scraper	$0.010 / result (free PlanIt API wrapper)	planning only
this actor	$0.020 / application-harvested	planning + building control

You are charged once per row delivered — nothing on start, nothing on failure. A weekly single-council run (40–200 rows) costs $0.80–4.00; the same coverage from the $0.05 competitor costs 2.5× more and still misses Building Control entirely. BC rows are the early signal: full plans deposited weeks before the planning application appears.

FAQ

Why Idox portals and not the national planning pipeline? PlanPipe-style national feeds cover planning applications only. Building Control deposits (structural alterations, steel insertions, demolitions) live on each council's Idox Public Access portal — that register is what this actor adds, and why builders/loft companies cannot get it elsewhere.

How fresh is the data? Each run harvests the live weekly list — typically published within a day or two of deposit. Run daily to catch councils that update mid-week.

How do I get only new applications? Deduplicate on key_val + council across runs; event_date lets you filter to the current week.

Can I add my council? Yes — open an Issue with the council name. Any Idox Public Access portal (100+ UK councils run Idox) is a small config addition, verified live before release.

What happens if a portal is down or changes? The run fails loudly with the council named, charges $0, and the next run retries. Partial results are still delivered and only those rows bill.

For AI agents & LLM apps

Compact reference for AI agents calling this actor via the Apify MCP server or the Apify API (actor: halobartku/uk-planning-building-control-scraper).

Purpose: Harvest the weekly Building Control and Planning application lists from UK council Idox Public Access portals — one normalised row per application (council, reference, proposal, site address, status, event type/date, portal link). Building Control deposits are the register no other Apify actor covers.

Minimal input:

{ "councils": ["leeds"], "registers": ["building_control"] }

Output: one row per application — council, council_name, portal_host, register_type (building_control|planning), reference, proposal, address, status, event_type, event_date, week_start, key_val, detail_url, harvested_at.

Behaviors an agent should know:

• Both councils and registers accept arrays; rows from all councils land in one dataset with the identical schema.
• Deduplicate across runs on key_val + council (or reference + council); event_date filters to the current week.
• Supported councils (v0.2): Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Tameside, Bury, Sefton, St Helens, Solihull, Cheltenham, Luton, Cheshire West and Chester (BC + planning); Newham (planning only). More on request via the actor's Issues tab.
• A failing portal fails the run loudly with the council named and charges $0; partial results are still delivered and only those rows bill.
• Billing: pay-per-event application-harvested, charged only after rows are written — failed or empty runs cost nothing.

Correctness — validated against the portals themselves

Actor output is re-verified against the live portal, not just "run completes". Latest check 2026-08-31: Bury Building Control, week starting 24 Aug — portal's own result count said 197 applications across 20 pages; the actor returned 197/197 unique rows, exact match. This check is what caught and fixed the v0.1.8 pagination bug (see changelog). A council that cannot be verified row-exact does not ship.

Changelog

0.3 — 2026-09-14: README-only. Sample-output section now leads with a rendered image of a real run's dataset (leeds + tameside, week 07 Sep 2026) with full provenance: run id, input, rows/fields disclosure, cap warning, per-row charge accounting. No code, schema or pricing changes.

0.1.9 — 2026-08-31: pagination fix #2, found by dated ground-truth validation. Some Idox portals (Bury) window their pager at 10 pages on page 1 even when the week holds more — the old code clamped pagination to the pager and silently delivered 100 of 197 rows for Bury's 24-Aug week (all billed). Now the portal's stated total drives pagination; a cap hit by maxRowsPerCouncil logs a loud WARNING instead of truncating silently; an empty page stops pagination safely. Re-validated live: 197/197 Bury, 21/21 Tameside, row-exact vs the portals' own counts. README corrected to the real council list (v0.1 text named five councils never in the build and omitted six that were). 0.1.6 — 2026-08-22: pagination fix. The portal's result-count phrase carries an inline </strong> (Showing 1-10</strong> of 76); our old count regex missed it, so multi-page weeks returned only page 1 (Leeds: 10 of 76 rows). Found by independent ground-truth validation, fixed, re-validated 76/76 + 18/18 rows exact vs same-minute portal HTML. If you ran this actor before 2026-08-22, re-run for complete weeks. 0.1 — 2026-08-20: initial public release. 12 councils, both registers, one normalised schema, per-row PAY-PER-EVENT pricing.

SEO keywords

uk building control applications scraper, building control register scraper, idox public access scraper, uk planning applications scraper, building control weekly list, building control deposits, building notices uk, structural alteration applications, uk planning weekly list, council planning register scraper, uk planning data api, construction leads uk, builder leads uk, loft conversion leads, property development leads uk, planning application monitoring, building control data export, uk council portals scraper, bury building control applications, tameside building control applications, bradford planning applications, sheffield building control, planning applications by council