London Planning Applications & Development Pipeline

Search every planning application in London. Results come from the Greater London Authority's official Planning London Datahub. It covers all 33 boroughs plus the London Legacy (LLDC), Old Oak and Park Royal (OPDC) and Oxford Street (OSDC) development corporations.

Each application comes back as one clean JSON record:

• status and decision;
• key dates;
• the development pipeline figures that UK-wide planning scrapers don't have: proposed homes, affordable homes, floorspace by use class, storeys, building height, projected cost band, lead developer, and intended and actual start and completion dates.

No login, no proxy, no browser. No personal data: no applicant or agent names, phone numbers or emails.

What can you do with it?

• Construction and supply-chain lead generation: "approved schemes with 50+ homes in East London decided this quarter", with storeys, cost band and developer.
• Development pipeline and market analysis: count homes or floorspace in the pipeline by borough, tenure or use class. Track which schemes have started or completed.
• Site due diligence: "everything applied for within 300 m of this site in the last 5 years".
• New-application alerts: schedule a daily run on dateFilterOn: "validated" with dateFrom: "1 day".
• AI agents: one tool call answers planning questions about London with structured, cited data (see Use with AI agents).

Data source and coverage

Source	Planning London Datahub, Greater London Authority (live feeds from every London planning authority's back-office system, updated daily)
Coverage	~1.3 million applications, all London planning authorities, records back to 2004
Development details	Homes, floorspace, storeys, cost band, phasing and similar fields exist for applications submitted through the national Planning Portal since the Datahub launched (November 2020). Others have the core fields only. Use onlyWithDevelopmentDetails to keep only the rich records
Personal data	None. The GLA excludes personal information from the Datahub, and this Actor outputs no applicant or agent contact details
Freshness	Each run queries the live Datahub, so you get the latest records

The data is supplied by applicants and councils. The Greater London Authority cannot warrant the quality or accuracy of the data. Check the council's own page (councilApplicationUrl) before relying on an individual record.

This Actor is independent. It is not endorsed by, affiliated with, supported or approved by the Greater London Authority.

Input

Every filter is optional and filters combine with AND. With an empty input you get the newest 100 non-householder applications validated in the last 30 days.

Field	What it does
boroughs	Planning authorities, e.g. ["Newham", "Tower Hamlets"]. Empty = all of London
keywords / excludeKeywords	Phrases matched against the description, site name and scheme name, e.g. ["student accommodation", "data centre"]
dateFilterOn	validated (new applications), decided (decision date) or updated (record changed)
dateFrom / dateTo	YYYY-MM-DD or a relative period like "7 days", "6 months". Default: last 30 days up to today
statuses	pending, approved, refused, withdrawn, appeal, commenced, completed, lapsed
applicationTypes	full, priorApproval, householder. Default excludes householder
minProposedHomes / minFloorspaceGainedSqm	Size thresholds
costBands	Up to £2m, Between £2m and £100m, Over £100m
postcodes	Full postcodes or districts, e.g. ["E15", "SE1 9SG"]. Many records have no postcode, so for location searches prefer the radius filter
nearLatitude / nearLongitude / radiusMeters	Applications within a radius of a point
sortBy	newest, oldest, mostHomes, largestFloorspace
maxResults	Default 100, up to 50,000
includeGeometry	Adds the site boundary as GeoJSON
includeFullDetails	Adds the complete raw development-details object (unit mix, tenures, parking, energy, open space)

Example input

Approved schemes of 10+ homes in Newham and Tower Hamlets decided this year, biggest first:

{
    "boroughs": ["Newham", "Tower Hamlets"],
    "statuses": ["approved"],
    "dateFilterOn": "decided",
    "dateFrom": "2026-01-01",
    "minProposedHomes": 10,
    "sortBy": "mostHomes",
    "maxResults": 25
}

Output

One record per application, from a live run on 3 Nov 2026 (description shortened here):

{
    "id": "Tower_Hamlets-PA_24_00812_A1",
    "planningAuthority": "Tower Hamlets",
    "reference": "PA/24/00812/A1",
    "applicationType": "All Other",
    "applicationTypeFull": "Full planning permission",
    "description": "Full phased planning application for redevelopment of the site following demolition of all existing buildings ... Purpose Built Student Accommodation ... Residential dwellings (Use Class C3) ...",
    "siteName": "Orchard Wharf, Orchard Place, London, E14",
    "schemeName": "Orchard Wharf",
    "address": "Orchard Wharf, Orchard Place, London, E14",
    "postcode": null,
    "ward": "Blackwall and Cubitt Town",
    "uprn": "6158219",
    "latitude": 51.508619,
    "longitude": 0.005106,
    "status": "Approved",
    "statusGroup": "approved",
    "decision": "Approved",
    "decisionDate": "2026-09-10",
    "validDate": "2024-06-03",
    "permissionLapsesDate": "2029-09-10",
    "workCommencedDate": null,
    "workCompletedDate": null,
    "proposedHomes": 1573,
    "existingHomes": 0,
    "netHomes": 1573,
    "proposedAffordableHomes": 208,
    "proposedBedrooms": 1812,
    "floorspaceGainedSqm": 79330,
    "floorspaceLostSqm": 1702.1,
    "floorspaceByUseClass": [
        { "useClass": "SG", "gainedSqm": 45875, "lostSqm": 0, "existingSqm": 0 },
        { "useClass": "C3", "gainedSqm": 20735, "lostSqm": 0, "existingSqm": 0 },
        { "useClass": "B2", "gainedSqm": 7524, "lostSqm": 0, "existingSqm": 0 }
    ],
    "siteAreaHa": 2.35,
    "maxStoreys": 25,
    "maxHeightM": 85.65,
    "projectedCostOfWorks": "Over £100m",
    "leadDeveloper": "Regal Orchard Wharf Limited",
    "intendedStartMonth": "2025-06",
    "intendedCompletionMonth": "2030-08",
    "councilApplicationUrl": "https://development.towerhamlets.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=DCAPR144363&activeTab=summary",
    "lastUpdated": "2026-11-02T21:01:19.818Z",
    "source": "Planning London Datahub (Greater London Authority)",
    "sourceUrl": "https://planninglondondatahub.london.gov.uk/"
}

• Dates are YYYY-MM-DD.
• statusGroup normalises more than 100 council status spellings into a small set of values.
• Fields a council didn't supply are null.
• The dataset has two views: Overview and Development pipeline.
• The run also writes a RUN_SUMMARY record (matches, saved, requests) to the key-value store.

Pricing

Pay per result, with no subscription and no start fee:

Event	Price
planning-application: one application written to the dataset	$0.02 ($20 per 1,000)

• You only pay for records you receive. Filtered-out applications are free.
• The Actor never returns more records than your run's maximum cost allows; it stops cleanly at that limit.
• Examples:
  • a 25-result agent query costs $0.50;
  • a daily alert returning 40 new applications costs $0.80.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

The input schema is written to be read by language models: every filter has a plain-English description and examples.

To give an agent (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and others) this Actor as a tool, add the Apify MCP server with only this Actor enabled:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=<username>/london-planning-applications

Example questions the agent can answer with a single call:

• "Which schemes of over 100 homes did Southwark approve in the last six months, and who are the developers?"
• "List planning applications within 500 m of 51.5416, -0.0098 since 2024 that mention student accommodation."
• "How many approved homes in Tower Hamlets have not started construction yet?"

Tips for agents:

• Keep maxResults small (10–50) for exploratory questions.
• Use sortBy: "mostHomes" for "largest schemes" questions.
• Use the radius filter rather than postcodes for "near" questions.

Run it from code

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/<username>~london-planning-applications/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"boroughs":["Hackney"],"statuses":["approved"],"dateFilterOn":"decided","dateFrom":"30 days","maxResults":50}'

FAQ

Why do some applications have no homes or floorspace figures? Those figures come from the London-specific questions on the Planning Portal application form. Applications submitted another way, older records, householder works, tree works and similar have only the core fields.

Is this legal to use?

• The Actor reads only the GLA's public, read-only Datahub API.
• It sends at most 2 requests per second and backs off when the service is busy.
• It returns no personal data.
• You are responsible for how you use the results.

How fresh is the data? Councils' systems sync into the Datahub daily, and each run reads the live Datahub.

Something looks wrong or a filter is missing? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. Issues are answered within a few days.