Planning Constraints Checker by Postcode – Conservation Area, Listed Building, Flood Zone (England)

Conservation area checker and listed building lookup in bulk: paste English postcodes, coordinates or UPRNs and get one row per property with conservation area, listed building grade, green belt, flood zone 2/3, tree preservation and Article 4 direction.

Data source	planning.data.gov.uk (MHCLG); postcodes.io for postcode lookup
Licence	Open Government Licence v3.0 (postcodes: OS OpenData)
Update frequency	Queried live on every run – as current as what councils have published
Coverage	England only. Not Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Some councils have not published every dataset yet (shown as no_data).
Cost example	100 properties = $0.005 + 100 × $0.005 = $0.505 per run. Not-found rows are not charged.

What it can do: fast first-pass screening of site lists, lending books or portfolios, with links to every source record. What it can't do: replace formal local authority searches or legal advice; give a flood risk assessment; guarantee "no" where a council hasn't published data. Postcodes are checked at the centroid – use coordinates/UPRN for exact buildings.

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Check a list of English properties for common planning constraints and get one row per property:

• Conservation area (yes / no / no data) + area name
• Listed building (yes / no / no data) + grade (I, II*, II) and list entry name
• Green belt (yes / no)
• Flood zone (Environment Agency flood zone 2 or 3, or "not in zone 2 or 3")
• Tree preservation (tree preservation zones and individual TPO trees)
• Article 4 direction (yes / no / no data) + direction name
• Local planning authority, source dataset names, links to every matching record on planning.data.gov.uk, and the retrieval date

Input can be UK postcodes, latitude/longitude and/or UPRNs, in any mix. It replaces opening each address on a map and copying designations into a spreadsheet, for example when screening a list of sites, a lending book or a property portfolio.

Data sources

• planning.data.gov.uk (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government). Datasets used: conservation-area, listed-building, listed-building-outline, green-belt, flood-risk-zone, tree-preservation-zone, tree-preservation-order, article-4-direction-area, local-planning-authority. All are published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
• postcodes.io for turning postcodes into coordinates (Great Britain postcode data under the OS OpenData licence; Northern Ireland postcodes are not supported).

This Actor does not use planning applications, land title boundaries or any other data about people. Output contains designations of places and buildings only.

"No" vs "no data" — please read

planning.data.gov.uk does not yet cover all of England. Many designations (conservation areas, Article 4 directions, tree preservation, listed building outlines) are published by each local planning authority, and some councils have not published some datasets yet.

• yes — a current record covers the property.
• no — the planning authority (or the national dataset) has published this dataset and no record covers the property.
• no_data — the planning authority has not published this dataset on planning.data.gov.uk. The property may still be affected. Check with the council.
• unknown — coverage could not be determined (e.g. the planning authority could not be matched or a request failed).

The field localDataPublished shows, per dataset, whether the authority has published data. Green belt and flood zones come from national datasets, so they are always yes/no.

Other limits:

• Postcodes are checked at the postcode centroid, not a specific building. For exact results use coordinates or UPRNs.
• Listed buildings and individual protected trees are published as points; they count as a match within nearbyPointRadiusM (default 20 m) of your coordinates. This can miss a large building or match a neighbour. UPRN-only rows rely on listed building outlines.
• Flood zones are the planning flood zones (2 and 3); they are not a flood risk assessment and ignore defences and surface water.
• Data is only as current as what authorities have published. Each row has retrievedAt.

This is not a substitute for formal local authority searches, a planning consultant or legal advice. Always confirm constraints with the local planning authority before relying on them.

Input example

{
  "postcodes": ["SW1A 1AA", "YO1 7HH"],
  "coordinates": ["51.500753,-0.142913"],
  "uprns": ["10008315764"],
  "maxProperties": 100
}

Output example (shortened)

{
  "input": "51.500753,-0.142913",
  "status": "checked",
  "localPlanningAuthority": "Westminster LPA",
  "conservationArea": "yes",
  "conservationAreaNames": ["Royal Parks"],
  "listedBuilding": "yes",
  "listedBuildingGrades": ["I"],
  "greenBelt": "no",
  "floodZone": "zone 2",
  "treePreservation": "no",
  "article4Direction": "yes",
  "matches": [{"name": "Royal Parks", "dataset": "conservation-area", "entityUrl": "https://www.planning.data.gov.uk/entity/44002902"}],
  "localDataPublished": {"Conservation area": true, "Article 4 direction area": true},
  "license": "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.",
  "retrievedAt": "2026-10-12T01:40:00Z"
}

Rows with status not_found (postcode or UPRN not found, or outside England), invalid_input or error are saved so you can see what happened, and are not charged.

Pricing

Pay per event:

• Actor start: $0.005 per run
• Property checked: $0.005 per property that was located in England and checked

Example: 100 properties ≈ $0.005 + 100 × $0.005 = $0.505. Inputs that cannot be located are free. Use maxProperties and Apify's maximum cost per run to cap spending.

Polite use and large portfolios

Requests are sent one at a time with a delay (default 0.5 s), repeated lookups are cached within a run, and each run is capped by maxProperties (max 2,000). A typical property takes a few seconds. For tens of thousands of properties, the bulk downloads on planning.data.gov.uk (CSV / GeoJSON per dataset) are a better choice than any API-based tool.

Attribution and disclaimer

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Dataset attributions include: © Historic England 2026. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Postcode data: Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right; Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right; Contains National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right.

This Actor is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by the UK Government, MHCLG, Historic England, the Environment Agency, Ordnance Survey or postcodes.io.

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Further reading

• Source data: planning.data.gov.uk
• Postcodes: postcodes.io
• SEO for Actors (Apify Help)