Plota shows new planning applications submitted to councils across the UK. This includes householder extensions, new builds, change of use, tree works, listed building consent, and more. Alongside live applications, Plota holds an archive of over 10 million applications going back to 2016, so you can research an area's full planning history, not just what is current. Each application links directly to the council's portal for full details.

Plota's planning search, maps, and email alerts are free to use, and always will be for people keeping an eye on local planning. We fund it through Plota's commercial API, which businesses and developers pay for to build planning data into their own products and services. So we make our money from the API, not from you - we don't sell your data and we don't run ads. See the API.

Smart search lets you describe what you're looking for in plain English - for example "loft conversions in SW15 this year" or "new build homes within 500m of Bath BA1". Plota uses AI to turn your words into a precise search across every council, picking out the location, category, dates, and keywords for you. Every part of how it read your query is shown as an editable chip on the results, so you can always see and adjust what was understood.

We check council planning portals daily. Most councils update overnight, so you'll typically see applications within 24 hours of them being validated.

We currently cover 389 councils across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland: every council in the UK. Council portals occasionally go offline or change without notice, so a council can briefly fall behind, but we're upfront about it: every council shows when it was last checked. See our coverage page.

Plota holds over 10 million planning applications, with full coverage going back to 2016. You can search live applications or dig into an area's past decisions, all in one place.

Yes. Search any postcode, street, or area and you will see both current applications and years of past ones, so you can understand how a place has developed and what tends to get approved nearby.

Yes. Search any postcode, street, town, or council, then set up a free email alert for that area. Plota checks council portals daily and emails you when new planning applications are published nearby. You can set up to 10 alert areas per email address. Set up an alert.

Yes. Open any application and track it to your dashboard, then choose exactly which updates you want emailed - when its status changes, when a decision is made, or when new documents are added to the case. It is the easiest way to follow a specific application you care about without checking the council portal yourself.

Yes. Instead of a fixed radius, you paint hex tiles on the map to define exactly where you want alerts - follow streets, skip areas you don't care about, or draw multiple separate zones. The grid is built on H3, the open-source hexagonal mapping system created by Uber, so every tile is a consistent street-level size. See how it works.

Yes. You can create alerts for specific planning application types, such as new homes, extensions, change of use, listed buildings, tree works, solar and renewables, telecoms masts, utilities, and more. There is no shared type standard across UK councils - each authority labels applications its own way - so Plota classifies every application itself across 16 categories, and can give one more than a single category so nothing is under-classified. That way you monitor the planning activity you care about rather than every item a council publishes. Our classifier is now recording accuracy of over 99% against a sample of 500 applications classified by the Plota team. See how we measured it.

Yes. Your saved alerts appear in My Areas, where you can review new applications, see them on a map, filter by category, change alert frequency, pause alerts, duplicate areas, and manage all the places you monitor. Set up alerts.

Yes. Each application links back to the official council planning record where available. Plota helps you search, filter, map, and monitor applications, but the council portal remains the official source for documents, comments, deadlines, and formal decisions.

Yes. Plota has a UK planning applications API for developers and data teams. It provides structured planning application data as JSON or CSV, including search, nearby results, category filters, council source links, saved alert feeds, exports, and webhooks. See the API.

A rating out of 10 for each English council based on official government data. It combines approval rate, decision speed, and how often the council extends the statutory time limit. You'll see it on every application page. Learn more.