Plota updates

Planning Authority Score

Every application page now shows a Planning Authority Score for the council handling it. It's a single number out of 10 that tells you how the council actually performs - not what they claim, but what the government data shows.

The score is calculated from official MHCLG data covering all 277 English planning authorities. We rank each council on three factors:

• Approval rate - what percentage of householder applications get approved
• Decision speed - what percentage are decided within the statutory 8 weeks
• Time extensions - how often the council extends the deadline beyond the standard time limit

Below the score, you'll see a plain-English summary of what to expect. Here's Fareham - one of the top-performing councils in England:

And here's Wiltshire, which scores significantly lower. The council extends the time limit on 56% of applications - one of the highest rates in England:

Each scorecard includes sparkline trends across four quarters, national average comparisons, and breakdowns for householder, minor dwellings, major dwellings, and change of use applications.

Draw your own alert area

Most planning alert services give you a postcode and a fixed radius. That works if your life fits neatly inside a circle, but it usually doesn't. You might want to watch a specific neighbourhood, one side of a road, or two separate areas at once.

Plota lets you draw your exact area on the map. Paint the hexagons you care about, skip the ones you don't, and we'll email you when new planning applications appear inside your boundary.

How it works

Search for a place or zoom into the map, then click Draw area. You'll see a grid of hexagons overlaid on the map. Click or drag to paint them, use the eraser to remove any you don't want, and hit Done when you're happy.

Need to cover a bigger area? Zoom out and use scribble mode - draw a rough outline and we'll fill it with hexagons automatically. You can even draw multiple separate areas in a single alert.

Once you're done, enter your email and choose daily or weekly alerts. You'll see a preview of your area and can edit it any time from the My Areas page.

Why hexagons?

Your drawn area is stored as a set of H3 hexagonal cells - the same spatial grid system used by Uber for surge pricing and Meta for location features. Hexagons tile uniformly (unlike squares, which distort at different latitudes), so your boundary is precise and consistent everywhere in the UK.

Daily and weekly email alerts

Set up an alert for any area and we'll send you a digest of new planning applications, either daily or weekly. Each email includes the application reference, address, description, and a direct link to the full details on Plota or the council's own portal.

You can filter out tree applications if you only care about building work, and manage all your alerts from one page. One-click unsubscribe in every email.