UK Planning Applications Scraper

Search new UK planning applications by postcode radius, council or map area, and get clean rows with the address, description, type, status, dates, coordinates, agent, a link to the council record, and the trades each job implies (extension, loft, driveway, solar and more). Built for builders, trades suppliers, agencies and property researchers who want fresh local jobs before anyone else calls. Data comes from PlanIt, which covers 400+ UK planning authorities, refreshes daily and sees roughly 2,900 new applications a week.

Part of the UK B2B lead suite. UK Planning Applications Scraper finds the building job, Website Contact Finder finds a company's published contacts, and UK Decision Maker Finder names the director who signs off.

What you can use it for

• Builders and loft or extension firms pulling every new extension and dormer application within 10 km of their yard.
• Solar, heat pump and EV charger installers watching for renewables applications across several councils.
• Driveway, landscaping and tree surgeons filtering to hardstanding, dropped kerb and tree work.
• Marketing agencies building a weekly lead feed for trade clients.
• Property investors and researchers tracking HMO conversions, new builds and demolitions in a patch.
• Architects and planning consultants seeing which agents are active in a council.

How to use it

1. Add a Postcode (for example WD17 1AB) and a Radius, or a Council such as Watford or Manchester City Council.
2. Choose how far back to look with Days back, or pick dates in the date pickers.
3. Optionally filter by trade (extensions, lofts, solar and more), keyword, application type or size, then click Start.
4. When it finishes, open the Output tab and download as CSV, Excel or JSON.

While it runs, the status line at the top of the run page shows progress (for example "Search 1 of 2: WD17 1AB within 2 km. 40 applications so far."). When it finishes, the same line says what was found and explains anything that was skipped, so you never have to read the log.

How much does it cost?

A $0.002 start fee per run, then $0.004 per application returned. You only pay for rows you get. Applications removed by your filters and duplicates across overlapping searches are never charged.

Applications	Cost
100	about $0.40
1,000	about $4.00
10,000	about $40.00

The maths: $0.002 + (1,000 x $0.004) = $4.002. A typical 1,000-application export, say a month of jobs across three or four councils, costs about $4.

Input

Field	What it does
postcodes + radiusKm	Search around UK postcodes (radius 1 to 50 km, default 2). Retired postcodes use their last known location; an unknown one falls back to its postcode area (the WD17 part).
authorities	Councils to search in full. Type them however you like: Watford, Watford Borough Council, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
bbox	Advanced, for developers: map rectangles as lng_min,lat_min,lng_max,lat_max.
daysBack or dateFrom/dateTo	Received-date window (default last 30 days). Use the date pickers or relative dates such as 30 days; a date range overrides daysBack.
trades	Only applications implying these trades: extension/building, loft/roofing, driveway/paving, solar/renewables, landscaping/trees, windows/doors, conversion/HMO, outbuilding, signage, newbuild, demolition.
keywords, appTypes, appSizes	Extra filters on description words, and application type (Full, Outline, Trees...) and size (Small, Medium, Large) picked from lists.
maxResults	Cap on rows across all searches (default 1,000). You pay only for rows returned.
maxPagesPerSearch	Advanced. Safety stop per search; each page is up to 100 applications (default 30).
proxyConfiguration	Advanced. Usually unnecessary, the source is a public JSON API.

A real job, a month of building leads across three councils and two postcode areas:

{
  "authorities": ["Watford", "Southwark", "Leeds"],
  "postcodes": ["M1 1AE", "WD17 1AB"],
  "radiusKm": 5,
  "daysBack": 30,
  "trades": ["extension/building", "loft/roofing", "driveway/paving"],
  "maxResults": 1000
}

Output

{
  "reference": "26/AP/1958",
  "planit_id": "Southwark/26/AP/1958",
  "council": "Southwark",
  "address": "38 Winterbrook Road London SE24 9JA",
  "postcode": "SE24 9JA",
  "description": "Demolition of the existing rear extension and erection of a single-storey wraparound rear extension...",
  "app_type": "Full",
  "app_size": "Small",
  "status": "Undecided",
  "trades": ["extension/building", "demolition"],
  "received_date": "2026-07-07",
  "decided_date": null,
  "agent": "...",
  "latitude": 51.451477,
  "longitude": -0.097187,
  "council_url": "https://planning.southwark.gov.uk/online-applications/...",
  "planit_url": "https://www.planit.org.uk/planapplic/Southwark/26/AP/1958/",
  "matched_search": "authority:Southwark",
  "source": "planit.org.uk"
}

Rows also carry consulted_date, consultation_end, applicant, agent_address, last_scraped and scraped_at when the council publishes them. matched_search tells you which of your searches found the row.

Tips for bigger runs

• Search by council for volume. A whole-authority search is fast and complete. Add several councils in one run to reach 1,000+ rows.
• Widen the window before the radius. A 2 km radius over 30 days in a quiet town may return a few dozen rows; 90 days returns far more. Keep city-centre radius searches to about 5 km: in September 2026 tests, 10 km searches around Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Bristol timed out at the data source, while 5 km worked. For whole-city coverage, search the council instead.
• Filter by trade, not by keyword alone. Trade tags use word-boundary rules tuned on real descriptions (a loft conversion is not tagged as an HMO), so they catch variations a single keyword misses.
• Tight filters over a big area? Filtering happens after fetching, so raise maxPagesPerSearch if a search stops before it has scanned the whole window.
• Avoid large radius searches in dense city centres, London above all. They can time out at the source and return nothing for that search; search the council instead.
• Schedule it weekly with daysBack: 7 to get only new jobs.

Scheduling and integrations

Save your search as a task and run it daily or weekly on an Apify schedule, then push results to Google Sheets, a webhook, Make, Zapier or your CRM through the Apify API. A minimal API call:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/oski~uk-planning-applications-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"authorities": ["Watford"], "daysBack": 7, "maxResults": 1000}'

If something looks wrong

The status line at the end of every run explains anything that was skipped or came back empty. The common messages:

Message	What to do
Input problem: ...	Something in the input needs changing, and the message says what. The run stopped before anything was charged.
No council called "..." (did you mean ...?)	Use the suggested name, or check the council's spelling.
"..." is not a UK postcode we could find	Check the postcode. Retired postcodes still work; made-up ones do not.
10km -> 5km (the wider search timed out at the data source)	Nothing to do: big-city searches are narrowed automatically so they finish. For full coverage, add more postcodes.
No applications matched	Widen the dates or radius, or remove filters.

Still stuck? Open an issue on the actor page with the run link and it gets looked at quickly.

FAQ

Is it legal? Planning applications are published on public registers so people can see and comment on them. The data comes from PlanIt, which aggregates those registers. Some rows include an applicant or agent name, which is personal data, so you are responsible for using it within UK GDPR and PECR.

Do I need an account or login? Only an Apify account. No council logins or API keys.

Why fewer results than expected? Your date window, radius or filters may be narrow, or the council may be slow to publish. Check the run log for any postcode it could not place.

How fresh is the data? PlanIt refreshes daily from council registers. The last_scraped field shows when PlanIt last read that record from the council.

Which councils are covered? 400+ UK planning authorities through PlanIt. Coverage and detail vary by council.

What if it breaks? Open an issue on the actor page and it gets fixed fast.

Other scrapers from Oski

• Website Contact Finder: emails, phones and socials from any list of websites. Only sites with a contact are charged.
• UK Decision Maker Finder: named directors and owners of UK companies from Companies House, starting from a website.
• Google Ads Transparency Scraper and Facebook Ad Library Scraper: see which local trades are advertising.