Plota API terms

1. What your plan lets you do

These terms apply only where you subscribe wholly or mainly for business purposes. By subscribing, you confirm that you are authorised to enter into this agreement on behalf of the organisation named on the order.

Any paid plan licenses you to use Plota data inside your own products and services, including commercial ones. That covers software you sell, tools your customers use, internal systems, CRMs, dashboards, reports, maps, alerts and automated workflows. You don't need Enterprise just because you have customers.

Multi-tenant products are Pro and above. Starter covers one organisation: your own tools, your own CRM, and the products you run for your own business and its customers. Where one integration serves several customer organisations, each working in their own account - a platform, marketplace, portal or white-label service - the plan is Pro or above. Not sure which side of the line you're on? Email us and we'll tell you.

You can store the records you retrieve, keep them in your own systems for as long as you subscribe, and build derived analysis on top of them. Derived analysis you create is yours.

Each record carries a link to the official council register. Keep that link with the record wherever you display one in full, so your users can verify the data at source.

This licence does not grant rights in linked plans, drawings, photographs, reports, or other third-party documents. You are responsible for complying with any third-party rights or terms that apply to that content.

2. What standard plans don't include

A subscription pays for ongoing access to the data. Plota's compiled, normalised, classified and structured database, including its schema, identifiers and derived fields, remains Plota's. The underlying planning records are public information published by councils and stay that way: this licence covers the compilation, not the public record. On Starter, Pro and Business you may not:

• sell, license or give away raw Plota data as a dataset, whether in bulk or by subscription
• offer a general-purpose planning application API, feed or bulk download service built on Plota data
• systematically retrieve records to assemble a substitute for the Plota database, live or historical. This includes retrieval spread across multiple accounts, API keys, subscription periods or organisations where the cumulative effect is to reproduce a substantial portion of the database
• share keys between organisations, or use multiple accounts to get around plan limits
• collect data from the public Plota website with automated tools; the API is the supported route for software

Exporting records for defined client projects, locations, research, or operational workflows is permitted within your plan limits. Sequential or repeated retrieval whose principal purpose is to create a general-purpose archive or a substitute for Plota is not permitted.

If your product genuinely needs one of these - bulk delivery, redistribution rights, resale - that's an Enterprise licence. Email us and we'll work it out.

3. The demo tier

The demo tier is free and for evaluation: testing the API shape, building a prototype, checking coverage against your patch. It isn't licensed for production or commercial use.

4. If you cancel

Records already incorporated into your CRM, your reports, completed projects or derived analysis may remain in those systems after cancellation. We won't ask you to unpick your work.

What ends with the subscription is access - you can't keep refreshing data. You may retain individual records and outputs previously incorporated into ordinary business records, CRM entries, completed projects, and reports, subject to applicable data-retention law. You may not continue operating a searchable general-purpose planning database or service using retained Plota records.

5. The historical archive

Applications from before 2026 come from the Plota archive and are a paid feature. The same licence applies to archive records as to live ones. Archive records carry a broad, council-based application type rather than Plota's deep classification, and their category is null.

6. Keys, limits and fair use

Your API key is a secret. Don't put it in client-side code, and rotate it from your dashboard if it leaks. You're responsible for requests made with your key.

Rate limits and the monthly request and records allowances per plan are on the pricing page; every response carries headers showing where you stand. Monthly quotas apply per account and reset at the start of each calendar month; the free demo is a one-time allowance that does not reset. When you reach a quota the API returns a rate-limit response until the next reset - limits are hard caps, and we don't charge automatic overage fees unless you've expressly agreed them. We review accounts whose usage pattern looks like systematic database retrieval rather than product use, and we'll contact you before acting on anything we see.

7. The data itself

Plota data is drawn from publicly available UK local planning authority records, normalised into one structure and classified by type. It's provided as-is. There is no official classification standard across UK councils - each authority publishes its own labels, formats, and conventions, and records can be incomplete or inconsistent at source. Plota uses automated classification to add a consistent classification layer. Any accuracy figures published by Plota describe particular testing undertaken at the stated time and are not a guarantee that every record will be classified correctly. The council's own type is kept on every record; check the council source before acting on a record.

Coverage. Plota covers a large and growing set of UK planning authorities, bringing what each one publishes into a single, consistent structure. Because councils publish different fields in different ways, the depth of detail varies between records, and the Contact Data add-on returns applicant, agent and case-officer details wherever the council makes them available. The free demo key lets you check the data and coverage for your own use case first - worth doing before any paid plan, since renewals aren't refunded for the month in progress.

Personal data. Some API records may constitute or contain personal data depending on their content and how they are used - a planning address, description, reference or other field can relate to, or reasonably be combined to identify, an individual. The optional Contact Data add-on provides additional applicant, agent and council case-officer information where available (see the pricing page). These are the names and details councils publish on their statutory public registers, handled in line with our privacy policy, which includes honouring objections from anyone named. They are available only with the Contact Data add-on on a Starter subscription or above, never on demo access.

Where either party processes personal data obtained through the API for its own purposes, each party acts as an independent controller. You are responsible for establishing and documenting your own lawful basis, providing any required privacy information, complying with UK GDPR and PECR, and responding to valid data-subject rights requests to the extent required by law. Each party must promptly tell the other about any objection, rectification, restriction, erasure request, complaint, or personal-data breach that materially affects personal data supplied through Plota, and provide reasonable assistance where required.

You must not attempt to identify or re-identify an individual whom Plota has masked, or use personal data for unlawful, deceptive, discriminatory, or harassing communications. Public availability does not itself make personal information fair game for marketing - you still need a lawful basis and must consider whether the use would be unexpected.

Plota provides data access, not legal or planning advice.

8. Changes and suspension

We may change the API, its endpoints, schema, available fields, council coverage, or plan limits. Where reasonably practicable, we will give advance notice of material backwards-incompatible changes. We may make immediate changes where necessary for security, legal compliance, or service integrity.

We will give at least 30 days' notice of price increases or material reductions to a paid plan. Changes apply from your next renewal after the notice period, and you may cancel before they take effect.

We can suspend a key that breaches these terms, and also where a key appears compromised, where activity threatens Plota or another customer, where traffic is fraudulent or malicious, or where suspension is legally required. Outside of clear abuse or a genuine security incident, we'll contact you first and try to fix the problem together.

We may update these terms. Material changes are emailed to active key holders before they take effect.

9. The commercial terms

Who you're contracting with. The Plota API is provided by Bridmore Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (trading as Plota). References to "we", "us" and "Plota" in these terms mean Bridmore Ltd.

The agreement. The order (the checkout record of what you bought), these API terms, the applicable pricing page, and the API documentation form the agreement between us. If they conflict, the order takes priority, followed by these terms, then the pricing page, then the API documentation.

Payment and renewal. Paid plans are billed monthly in advance and renew automatically until cancelled. You can cancel any time; your plan runs to the end of the month you've already paid for, and access ends there. We don't refund part-months - cancelling stops future renewals rather than refunding the month in progress. If a payment fails and stays unpaid after we've contacted you, we can suspend the key until it's settled.

Availability. We run the API to be reliable, and every response carries live status headers so you can see how things stand. Where planned maintenance might interrupt the service, we'll give reasonable notice. Standard plans don't come with a formal uptime guarantee (SLA), and we aren't liable for interruptions outside our reasonable control - such as problems at our hosting providers or at the council portals the data is drawn from. If you need a contractual uptime commitment, we're glad to discuss it.

Liability. The data is provided as-is (section 7). To the fullest extent permitted by law, our aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the API, its data, or these terms, whether in contract, tort including negligence, misrepresentation, or otherwise, is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim. We aren't liable for indirect or consequential losses, or for loss of profit, revenue or data. You are responsible for maintaining appropriate backups of data held in your own systems. Nothing in these terms limits liability that can't lawfully be limited, such as for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

Termination. We can end a subscription for material breach that isn't fixed within 14 days of us raising it, or immediately for non-payment or clear abuse. Section 4 governs what happens to stored data either way.

Law. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute.

Version 2.0, effective 28 July 2026. Questions: hello@plota.co.uk. See also the privacy policy and API docs.