UK Planning Applications, All Councils

Planning applications from every UK local authority in one feed, tagged by the type of work, with applicant and agent details attached.

Planning data is normally scattered across more than 300 separate council portals, each with its own site and search. This Actor gives you the lot from a single search.

What makes this useful

Every application is classified by the kind of work proposed, so you can pull just the jobs you care about instead of filtering thousands of records yourself:

solar, extension, loft-conversion, new-dwelling, change-of-use, demolition, roofing, windows-doors, driveway-landscaping, trees, signage, listed-building, commercial

Ask for solar in the last 7 days within 10km of a postcode and you get exactly that.

Who uses it

Solar and heat pump installers. Every approved or pending solar application in your area, with the property address.

Builders, roofers, window and extension firms. Homeowners with planning permission for the work you do, at the moment they are looking for a contractor.

Architects and planning consultants. Track which agents are winning work in your patch using the applicant and agent search.

Estate agents and property investors. Spot new dwellings, conversions and land coming forward before they hit the market.

Suppliers and merchants. Development pipeline by area and size.

Search options

Set at least one of recentDays, startDate, areas, postcode, searchText or developerText.

Field	Description
recentDays	Applications from the last N days. 0 means today
startDate, endDate	Explicit date range, YYYY-MM-DD
areas	Comma separated council names, blank for all UK
postcode, radiusKm	Search around a postcode instead
opportunityTags	Only return these work types
applicationState	Undecided, Permitted, Rejected, Withdrawn, Conditions
applicationSize	Small, Medium, Large
searchText	Free text search of the description
developerText	Search applicant and agent names and addresses
maxResults	Hard cap on billable results

Output

One item per planning application.

Field	Description
reference, uid, name	Council reference and the nationally unique id
council	Local authority
address, postcode	Site address
latitude, longitude	Site coordinates where the council publishes them
description	What is being applied for
opportunityTags	Classified work types
applicationType, applicationState, applicationSize	Type, decision status and scale
startDate, decidedDate, decision	Key dates and the outcome
dwellings	Number of dwellings, where stated
ward, parish	Local geography
applicantName, applicantAddress	Who is applying
agentName, agentCompany, agentAddress	Acting agent or architect
caseOfficer	Council case officer
documentsUrl, councilUrl, planitUrl	Links to the source records
retrievedAt	Retrieval timestamp

Applicant and agent fields depend on what each council publishes, so they are not present on every record. Results are deduplicated within a run.

Data source and fair use

Data comes from PlanIt, an independent service that aggregates UK local authority planning portals, and originates from the councils themselves. This Actor rate limits itself between requests. If you are pulling large volumes regularly, consider supporting PlanIt, since the service is free and volunteer run.

Applicant and agent names are published by councils as part of the statutory planning process. If you retain them you are responsible for your own lawful basis under UK GDPR.

Postcode formats

Type the postcode however you have it. All of these reach the same place:

BS1 4DJ      bs1 4dj      BS14DJ       bs14dj
BS1-4DJ      BS1.4DJ      "BS1 4DJ"    BS1 4DJ.

Case, spacing and surrounding punctuation are all normalised before the search runs. PlanIt itself rejects a postcode without its space, so this matters: it answers BS14DJ with "No location found" rather than resolving it.

GIR 0AA is handled as the special case it is. An outward code on its own, such as BS1, is passed through untouched rather than guessed at, and a full address is left alone so it can be matched as text.

Radius, and why a wide one fails

PlanIt's own data source gives up after 45 seconds and reports it as an error. A radius above roughly 10km crosses that line most of the time, whatever date range it is paired with. Measured against the same postcode:

Radius	Result
10km, 7 / 30 / 90 days	succeeds every time, around 42 seconds
20km, 7 / 30 / 90 days	times out five attempts out of six

The date range is not what costs the time, the radius is. A 90 day search at 10km returns fine. So keep the radius at 10 or below and run several searches around different postcodes rather than one wide one. The actor retries an upstream timeout, but each retry costs another 45 seconds, so it is not a substitute for a sensible radius.