UK Planning Constraints Checker (England)

Check any postcode or coordinate in England against 28 official planning constraint datasets in one go: conservation areas, listed buildings, Article 4 directions, tree preservation orders, flood zones 2 and 3, green belt, National Landscapes (AONB), national parks, SSSIs, scheduled monuments, World Heritage Sites, ancient woodland and more.

You get one flat row per location, with a true/false column for each constraint, the local planning authority, the conservation area name, the worst flood zone, nearby listed buildings with their grade, and links to the official records. The data comes straight from the government's planning.data.gov.uk API, so there's no scraping, no captchas and no stale copies.

What it's for

• Property and land due diligence: screen a list of sites before you buy, bid or instruct a surveyor.
• Architects, planning consultants and builders: know before you draw whether you're in a conservation area or under an Article 4 direction (which removes permitted development rights).
• Estate agents and proptech: enrich listings with "listed building nearby", "flood zone 3" or "green belt" flags.
• Lenders, insurers and valuers: bulk-check a portfolio of postcodes for flood zones and heritage constraints.
• Solar, EV charging and telecoms rollouts: filter out sites with heritage or environmental designations.
• AI agents: call it as an MCP tool to answer "can I build here?" questions with official data.

Input

Field	What it does
locations	Postcodes (SW1A 1AA) or latitude, longitude pairs (51.5014, -0.1419). One output row each.
constraints	Optional. Only check these datasets. Leave empty to check all 28.
radiusMetres	Listed buildings and individual protected trees are stored as points, so they are searched within this radius (default 50 m, max 500 m, 0 turns it off).
includeConstraintList	Adds a constraints array with each hit's name, reference, grade or flood level, distance and official link. On by default.

{
    "locations": ["SW1A 1AA", "BA1 1LZ", "51.4826, -0.0077"],
    "radiusMetres": 50
}

Output

One row per location (trimmed here):

{
    "input": "BA1 1LZ",
    "postcode": "BA1 1LZ",
    "latitude": 51.381125,
    "longitude": -2.360104,
    "localPlanningAuthority": "Bath and North East Somerset LPA",
    "ward": "Kingsmead",
    "constraintCount": 3,
    "constraintSummary": "Conservation area; Scheduled monument; World Heritage Site",
    "conservationArea": true,
    "conservationAreaName": "Bath",
    "listedBuildingOutline": false,
    "listedBuildingsNearby": true,
    "listedBuildingsNearbyCount": 15,
    "highestListedGradeNearby": "I",
    "article4Direction": false,
    "treePreservationZone": false,
    "floodRiskZone": false,
    "floodZone": null,
    "greenBelt": false,
    "nationalLandscape": false,
    "worldHeritageSite": true,
    "constraints": [
        {
            "dataset": "conservation-area",
            "label": "Conservation area",
            "name": "Bath",
            "reference": "5113",
            "detail": null,
            "distanceMetres": null,
            "documentationUrl": "https://beta.bathnes.gov.uk/view-conservation-area-character-appraisals",
            "entityUrl": "https://www.planning.data.gov.uk/entity/44006636"
        },
        {
            "dataset": "listed-building",
            "label": "Listed buildings nearby",
            "name": "GRAND PUMP ROOM",
            "reference": "1394019",
            "detail": "Grade I",
            "distanceMetres": 8,
            "documentationUrl": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1394019",
            "entityUrl": "https://www.planning.data.gov.uk/entity/31849577"
        }
    ],
    "source": "planning.data.gov.uk (MHCLG), Open Government Licence v3.0",
    "checkedAt": "2026-10-24T13:40:00.000Z"
}

Every constraint has its own boolean column, so the dataset opens cleanly in Excel or Google Sheets: conservationArea, listedBuildingOutline, listedBuildingsNearby, locallyListedBuildingsNearby, article4Direction, treePreservationZone, protectedTreesNearby, floodRiskZone, greenBelt, nationalLandscape, nationalPark, sssi, specialAreaOfConservation, specialProtectionArea, ramsarSite, scheduledMonument, worldHeritageSite, worldHeritageBufferZone, historicParkOrGarden, historicBattlefield, heritageCoast, ancientWoodland, localNatureReserve, nationalNatureReserve, archaeologicalPriorityArea, airQualityManagementArea, nutrientNeutralityCatchment and brownfieldLand.

Locations that can't be checked (bad input, unknown postcode, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland) get a row with an error message and are not charged.

Pricing

$0.006 per location checked, plus a token $0.00005 per run. Failed or invalid locations are free. 1,000 postcodes cost about $6.

Good to know

• England only. planning.data.gov.uk covers English planning authorities. Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish postcodes return an error row (free).
• Postcodes are a point, not a boundary. A postcode is checked at its centre (from the ONS postcode directory via postcodes.io), so a large postcode can straddle a boundary. For a specific building, pass its coordinates.
• Coverage varies by council. Conservation areas, Article 4 directions and tree preservation orders are supplied by each council; most of England is covered, but not every council has published every dataset yet. National datasets (flood zones, listed buildings, green belt, SSSIs and the rest) are complete.
• Not legal advice. This is a fast screening tool. Always confirm with the local planning authority before you rely on it.

Use it from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor (MCP)

AI assistants can call this actor as a tool through Apify's MCP server. Add this server URL to your MCP client and sign in with your Apify account when prompted:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=onibaku/uk-planning-constraints

Data source and licence

Constraint data: planning.data.gov.uk, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, with data from Historic England, the Environment Agency, Natural England and local planning authorities, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Postcode locations: postcodes.io (ONS and Ordnance Survey data, OGL).

More UK public data actors from Onibaku

• UK Food Hygiene Ratings (FSA) Search
• Charity Commission Register Search
• Ofsted Ratings & Report Cards

Questions or a dataset you'd like added? Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab or email admin@onibaku.co.uk.