About Plota
Plota began in 2025 as a data project exploring what planning applications could tell us about how places were changing.
We wanted to compare what was being proposed, where development was happening, and how applications progressed over time. Instead, we found ourselves spending most of our time finding, cleaning, and reconciling the records needed to answer those questions.
Planning data is scattered across hundreds of council websites, each using different systems, descriptions, categories, statuses, and decision labels. Similar applications can be recorded in completely different ways, making them difficult to find and harder to compare.
Before we could study the trends, we had to build the dataset.
That work became Plota. The public website launched in March 2026, and the company was incorporated that July. Founded by Hector, whose background is in analytics and digital products, Plota is an independent planning-data company based in Hackney.
Building the dataset
Plota brings together current and historic planning applications from 390 planning authorities across the UK, with more than 10 million records going back to 2016.
We collect records from the original council systems and continue checking them as applications progress. We are not buying a finished planning feed and putting a new interface on top of it.
Sources are checked daily. We follow changes in status, newly published documents, and decisions, rather than importing each application once and leaving it untouched.
Every application links back to the official council record. We also publish our coverage and freshness information, including when each source was last checked, so people can judge the data for themselves.
Making the records useful
Collecting the records is only the starting point.
Councils often use different language for the same type of development, status, or decision. Plota adds a normalisation layer that categorises applications, standardises important fields, and arranges key dates and decisions into clearer timelines.
We keep the original council information alongside this added structure. Where the source information is unclear, we would rather leave something uncategorised than make a confident guess that may be wrong.
This makes applications easier to find, follow, and compare across different areas. It also allows us to return to the question that started Plota: what does planning activity tell us about how places are changing?
The structured data can reveal patterns across locations, development types, decisions, and time periods. It also powers the Plota API, allowing the same information to be used in research, analysis, and other products.
Designed to be used
Plota is used by people checking what is happening near their home, as well as planning consultants, developers, journalists, researchers, and analysts working across much larger areas.
A search might cover years of history, millions of records, and several categories at once. It should still feel quick and straightforward.
The complexity belongs behind the scenes, not in the experience.
Free for the public
Planning information affects communities, so the public search, maps, application tracking, and email alerts are free to use.
The service is supported by our commercial API, which gives businesses and developers access to the same structured data that powers the website. We do not fund the public product through advertising or by selling user data.
What started as a planning-trends project has become the dataset and tools we needed to carry it out properly.