A run of smaller changes, all with the same aim: whatever you type, land you on the most useful page in one step.
Exact addresses
Type a full address - "14 Mill Road, Saffron Walden" - and you now land on that address, with its applications listed and the map pinned to the property rather than the wider area. Every search box on the site understands this.
Roads, two ways
Searching on a road matches applications along that street; around or near a road searches a radius instead. Useful when a street name recurs across the country - the results respect what you meant.
Results you can work with
Results pages gained stage tabs - one click to see just pending or just decided applications - and sorting, including nearest-first when your search has a location. Status pills on the cards now lead with the stage, so a page of results scans at a glance.
Stage is Plota's normalised reading of council status wording. Every planning site describes progress in its own words - one authority's "Awaiting decision" is another's "Under consideration" and a third's "Registered" - so we map them all onto a small, consistent set of stages, and keep the council's original wording on the record too.
Searches that land on the right page
Search a council plus a type of work - "extensions in Wandsworth" - and you land on a dedicated page for exactly that, rather than a generic results view.