Updated October 2026 · Data

How to find planning applications in your area (free and paid)

Planning applications are public. Every planning authority keeps a register you can read for free, and almost all of them put it online. The catch is that there are hundreds of registers, each with its own search page and, where it offers alerts, its own sign-up, and none of them sorts what is new by trade. This guide shows where to look in each part of the UK, what you will find on a record, and when a paid tool is worth it.

The quick answer

1. Find the council for the address. In England and Wales, GOV.UK’s Search the register of planning decisions takes a postcode and sends you to the right council, and Find your local council gives you the council’s website.
2. Open the council’s planning search. It is usually called “Public Access”, “Planning Online” or “Search planning applications”. Search by postcode, street, or the reference number on a site notice or a neighbour letter.
3. Open the application. You will see the description, the dates, the documents and, once it is decided, the decision notice with any conditions.

That is enough for one address. If you need to keep watching an area, or several, read on.

Where to search in each part of the UK

England

The planning register is kept by district, unitary, metropolitan and London borough councils, and by National Park authorities for land in a park. It comes in two parts: applications still being considered, and applications that have been decided. The decided part records the decision, the conditions attached to a permission and the date, and any appeal. The law allows a council to put the register on its website rather than requiring it, but in practice almost every council publishes it online.

The Planning Portal is where most applicants submit an application. It is not a search: its own help page says it does not have access to an application once it has been submitted, so you view it on the council’s register.

Wales

The same pattern. Applications are submitted through Planning Portal Wales or direct to the council, and each council keeps the register, including decisions and conditions. Start from GOV.UK’s register search or the council’s own website.

Scotland

Each council runs its own online planning search. ePlanning.scot, run by the Scottish Government with the planning authorities, is for submitting applications and appeals, not for searching them. Scottish councils must also publish lists of the applications they receive on their websites, which is a useful way to scan what is new.

Northern Ireland

Since December 2022 one Planning Register covers 10 of the 11 councils and the Department for Infrastructure, so you can search most of Northern Ireland in one place. Mid Ulster District Council runs its own online service.

How you would hear about an application near you

Councils have to publicise applications, which is how most people first learn of one. In England a council either puts up a site notice for at least 21 days (18 days for major public service infrastructure) or writes to the neighbours, and it publishes every application on its website. Larger schemes, those that depart from the local plan and those affecting a public right of way are advertised in a local newspaper as well. The council cannot decide an application until at least 21 days after a site notice or neighbour letter (18 days for major public service infrastructure), or 14 days after a newspaper or website notice, so there is always a window to comment. Wales works in a similar way. In Scotland the council writes to neighbours itself and gives them at least 21 days.

Those notices reach the people next door. They do not reach a roofer, a supplier or a developer three towns away, which is why firms that win work from planning search the registers instead.

What you will find on a planning record

• The reference number, the fastest way back to the record and the way to follow it to a decision.
• The site address and a description of what is proposed, written by the applicant or the council.
• The application type: householder, full, outline, reserved matters, listed building consent, prior approval and so on. Our guide to planning application types explains what each one means for the trades.
• The dates: received, validated, the consultation period and the target decision date.
• The documents: the application form, drawings, a design and access statement on larger schemes, and specialist reports.
• Comments from consultees and the public, where the council publishes them.
• The decision: the decision notice with its conditions, and often the case officer’s report explaining it. After a permission, look for applications to discharge those conditions; they are a sign that work is close to starting, as our guide to discharge of conditions explains.

Searching across many councils

A council register is built for looking up one place at a time. If your patch crosses two or three boundaries, and most trades’ patches do, you run the same search on several different websites, each with its own layout, several times a week. Many councils publish a weekly list of new and decided applications, which helps, but you still have to read every list and every description yourself. You can see how that maps to real areas on our council pages, for example Glasgow and Lambeth, and the full list of councils we cover.

There are free aggregators that pull applications from many councils into one index. They are useful for occasional research, though coverage, freshness and the depth of each record vary. The government’s own national dataset of planning applications on planning.data.gov.uk is not a shortcut yet: as of October 2026 the site describes it as incomplete and not ready for use.

Paid planning-data tools

Once finding applications becomes a recurring job, whether that is winning work, tracking competitors or watching a development pipeline, the manual routes stop scaling. Paid tools differ a lot in who they are built for:

• Construction project-lead platforms such as Glenigan and Barbour ABI focus on larger projects and contract pipelines, sold through a sales team on annual contracts. We set out the trade-offs on our SiteLens vs Glenigan and SiteLens vs Barbour ABI pages.
• Land and development tools focus on site sourcing, ownership and valuation, a different job from finding work in the supply chain.
• SiteLens sits at the supply-chain end. It checks the planning registers of 380+ UK councils every night, classifies each new application by trade and project type, lets you filter by estimated value, and emails you the applications that match your trade and area. It is self-serve, with published prices.

Where a paid tool is the wrong choice: for a true one-off, such as checking a single address before you buy a house, the council register is the right tool, and you should not pay for more.

How to search effectively, whichever route you use

• Start from the postcode, then widen. Search the exact address first, then the street or ward, to catch neighbouring proposals that may affect it.
• Note the reference number. It is the reliable way to track an application through to its decision.
• Watch the validation date, not the submission date. The decision clock runs from validation, and that is usually when the application appears on the register.
• Read the decision notice, not just the outcome. The conditions say what still has to be approved before work can start.
• Describe what you want in plain English. On SiteLens you can type something like “approved warehouse extensions near Manchester in the last 6 months” and it sets the filters for you.

How to compare councils (without trusting a single number)

A common next question is which councils approve the most, or decide the fastest. Approval rates and decision times for England are published every three months by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in its planning applications statistics, but a headline rate mixes application types, and a high one can reflect a lot of straightforward householder applications. Compare the same application type over the same period instead. We walk through the method in council approval rates: how to compare councils, and how long decisions take in how long planning permission takes. SiteLens Pro breaks approval rate and median decision time down by council and by category, such as householder, residential or commercial, so you compare like with like.

Which route is right for you?

To check one address once, use the council register: it is free and it is the official record. For occasional research across boundaries, the register finders and free aggregators will do. If finding applications is part of how you win or plan work, week in and week out, across several areas and filtered to your trade, that is the job SiteLens is built for, and you can try it without talking to anyone.

Sources

• GOV.UK: Search the register of planning decisions and Find your local council
• The Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015: article 40 (the register), article 15 (publicity) and article 34(9) (time before a decision)
• The Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (Scotland) Regulations 2013: regulation 18 (neighbour notification) and regulation 22 (published lists of applications)
• Planning Portal (England and Wales): How do I view progress on an application?
• Scottish Government: ePlanning.scot
• Department for Infrastructure: the new Planning Portal for Northern Ireland
• planning.data.gov.uk: planning application dataset
• MHCLG: Planning applications statistics