UK Planning Applications API — Source-Linked Data From Every Monitored Council

Search UK planning applications and decisions by council, postcode, radius or keyword, and export them as JSON, CSV or Excel. Every record carries a direct link back to the council's own planning register, so any result can be checked against the source.

This actor is an API client, not a scraper. It calls PlanWire, which monitors council planning registers continuously and normalises them into one consistent response shape. Nothing here touches a council portal directly, so you are not exposed to portal changes, rate blocks or captcha walls.

What you get

• 375 monitored local planning authorities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
• 17.6 million applications, with history reaching back to the 1990s for many councils
• Decisions and decision dates where the council has published them
• A source URL on every record, pointing at the council's own page for that application
• Freshness metadata — when PlanWire last checked the source, kept separate from when the record was last written

Search modes

Mode	What it does	Example
council	Everything from one authority	wokingham, city-of-london
postcode	A full postcode or an outward code	SW1A 1AA, or SW1A for the district
nearby	Radius around a point	lat 51.5019, lng -0.1275, radiusKm 1
keyword	Free text across councils	loft conversion, change of use

Leave council blank in council mode to list every council PlanWire covers, with its identifier — useful as a first run.

Output

Each record includes:

reference          council's own application reference
councilId          which authority holds it
address            site address
postcode           where the council publishes one
description        the proposal text
applicationType    householder, full, listed building consent, and so on
status             the council's own status wording
decision           decision text where published
decisionOutcome    normalised: approved, refused, withdrawn, unknown
receivedDate       when the council received it
validatedDate      when the council validated it
decisionDate       when it was decided
lat, lng           coordinates where available
uprn               UPRN where matched, for joining to property datasets
url                link to the application on the council's register

Export straight to JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or pull the dataset through the Apify API into your own pipeline.

You need a PlanWire API key

Get one free at planwire.io — no card required.

• Free — 25 requests per day, sample records, for checking the response shape
• Developer (£49/mo) — 1,000 requests per day, live and historic data, one signed webhook
• Production (£199/mo) — 10,000 requests per day, 100 webhooks including nationwide coverage
• Business (£499/mo) — 50,000 requests per day, priority on coverage fixes

Keep maxRecords low on a free key: the daily allowance is 25 requests, and each page of results is one request.

Typical uses

• Property and proptech products — put planning history behind an address lookup
• Construction and trade lead generation — find works approved near your service area
• Due diligence — assemble the full planning history of a site before purchase
• Market research — track application volumes, approval rates and decision times by authority
• Monitoring — watch a postcode area and pick up new applications as they appear

Notes and limits

• Coverage, history depth and field completeness vary by authority. Some councils publish far more than others, and PlanWire reports per-council freshness rather than claiming uniform coverage.
• A planning application is not evidence that construction has started.
• Free keys return sample records rather than live data. Use a paid plan for current applications.
• Radius size and result limits vary by plan.

Beyond this actor

The same data is available through the REST API, signed webhooks that push new applications to your endpoint, and an MCP server so assistants like Claude and Cursor can query UK planning data directly.

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Run by PlanWire · API documentation · Council coverage