PlanNexus turns 360+ council planning portals into one searchable stream. You don't need to write code to get value — saved searches and email digests cover most use cases. This page covers the non-developer path; for the API, see the developer docs.
If you just want planning intelligence in your inbox, here's the fastest path. No code, no dashboards to babysit.
Tip: start with two or three searches. It's easier to refine them after a week of digests than to set up ten on day one.
Planning consultants and estate agencies usually operate across several councils. Rather than creating one saved search per council, pick all the councils you cover in a single saved search. The daily digest then arrives as one email covering every patch.
The saved-search cap (10 on Free, 50 on Alerts Pro) counts each saved search once regardless of how many councils it covers — so a 20-council single search uses one slot.
Every filter is optional. Leave them all blank and you'll get every new application across the UK — useful for nothing. Combine two or three to get a focused stream.
dwellingsMatches the application's description or address. Case-insensitive substring match. Useful keywords for housebuilders: 'dwellings', 'flats', 'units', 'apartments'. For commercial: 'office', 'industrial', 'warehouse', 'retail'.
Heads up: The keyword search does NOT understand numbers — 'erection of 24 dwellings' matches 'dwellings' but there's no way today to filter by unit count. See the FAQ below.
SW1, SW3, SE1, E14Comma-separated outward codes. A row matches if any listed prefix matches. 'SW1' matches SW1A, SW1B, SW1H, etc. Use prefixes that target the area you care about — Greater London uses 100+ prefixes if you want every borough.
Heads up: Postcodes come from the application address as published by the council. Some councils publish addresses without postcodes — those won't match a postcode filter.
Westminster City CouncilLimit to a single local authority. Type to search the dropdown — we cover 360+ of the UK's ~376 LPAs and the count grows weekly. Leave blank to match every council we cover.
Approved, GrantedPick one or more from the dropdown chips. The list is pulled from live data, ranked by frequency, so you'll see council-specific spellings (e.g. 'Approved' vs 'Permission Granted' vs 'Permitted'). Tick all the ones that mean 'approved' to your workflow.
Heads up: Status terminology varies by council — some never use the word 'Approved' at all. If you only see results from a handful of councils, broaden the status set.
Full, Outline, HouseholderFilter by type of application. 'Full' = a full planning permission application. 'Outline' = principle-of-development approval, details to follow. 'Householder' = small domestic works (extensions, loft conversions). Pick multiple to widen the net.
In a conservation areaTick to require ALL selected constraints. Constraint data comes from planning.data.gov.uk and is enriched on each application — the coverage is highest in England and grows with each scrape.
Heads up: Not every application has constraint enrichment yet. If you require 'In a conservation area' you'll only see applications we've successfully enriched against the conservation-area dataset. Loosen this filter first if results look thin.
Within 25 km of Central LondonPick a city preset or enter a custom lat/lng with a radius (km). Matches applications whose location coordinates fall inside the circle. Useful when postcode prefixes don't cleanly cover your patch.
Heads up: Radius search only matches applications with known coordinates. Coverage varies by council — some publish coords on every application, others none. Combine with a postcode-prefix or council filter for a denser stream.
Daily / WeeklyDaily digests fire at 08:00 UK time with everything new since the last digest. Weekly digests fire on Monday morning covering the previous 7 days.
Heads up: If a saved search returns no matches in a window, no email is sent. Empty digests would clutter your inbox without telling you anything new.
Concrete examples for common buyer profiles. Copy the filters into a new saved search and tune from there.
Property developer, 9–50 unit schemes, post-approval
The keyword 'dwellings' is the most reliable proxy for residential schemes. Scan each digest entry to confirm unit count — see the FAQ for why we don't filter on it directly.
Heat-pump installer; targeting recently-approved domestic projects
Householder extensions often retrofit heating at the same time. Weekly cadence keeps your inbox clean; daily for hotter patches.
Estate agent, knowing what's about to be sellable
An approval today means homes on the market in 18–36 months. Tracking approvals weekly is a leading indicator your competitors don't have.
Local builder targeting domestic renovation work
Radius search beats postcode prefixes for a tradesman's catchment area — you don't have to hand-list every postcode in the patch.
Heritage / conservation consultant tracking work in protected stock
Constraint filters are AND — both must apply. If results look thin, drop one constraint.
Insurance underwriter, surveyor, or risk analyst
Not directly — councils don't publish unit counts in a structured machine-readable way. The unit count lives inside the application's description text (e.g. “Erection of 24 dwellings…”), which our keyword search can match against, but you'll need to scan each result to confirm the exact number.
We're working on NLP-based unit extraction. Drop us a line if this is critical for your workflow — early adopters shape what we ship first.
Yes. CSV export is a paid feature, and each export returns up to 25,000 rows. There's also a monthly export allowance by tier — Alerts Pro 50,000 rows, Starter 250,000, Pro 2,000,000, and Enterprise unlimited. Your usage and remaining allowance for the month are shown on your Usage page, and normal working-list exports sit well within these limits.
We re-scrape every active council on a rolling schedule — most are checked within 24 hours of new applications appearing on the council portal. Coverage freshness is shown live on the /coverage page (green = ≤48 h; amber = ≤7 d; red = older). If a council goes red, our scraper has a problem on that authority — we usually fix within 48 hours.
360+ of the UK's ~376 local planning authorities at the time of writing — see /coverage for the live list and what's missing. We add new authorities most weeks. National Park Authorities, the Broads, and crown-dependency councils are also covered where they publish online.
Yes, on Alerts Pro and above. Every saved search row in your dashboard has a CSV button (raw applications matching the search, last 90 days by default) plus a Top agents button (ranked agent firms most active across the matched applications, last 2 years by default). Both download straight into Excel. Free tier is API-only — call /v1/applications and use the JSON, or upgrade to Alerts Pro for the in-dashboard download.
Alerts Pro (£19/month) is for non-developers who want planning intelligence delivered: 50 saved searches (vs 10 on free), CSV download of your matches per saved search, top-agents analytics view (rank the local agent firms most active in your patch), priority email support, and the same daily/weekly digest format. It's the right tier for builders, agents, consultants, and anyone who doesn't want to code against the API.
Building an integration? PlanNexus is REST-first with typed SDKs for Python and TypeScript. See:
pip install plannexus / npm install plannexus.We reply to every email within one working day. Tell us what you're trying to do — we often build features for the first person who asks.
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