About PlanWatch

Why PlanWatch exists

PlanWatch started with a frustrating experience. In 2024, a planning application was submitted for a large development 200 metres from my home — and I only found out about it after the consultation period had closed. By the time I spotted the notice pinned to a lamppost, it was too late to have my say.

I went looking for a simple way to monitor planning applications near a specific address. What I found was a mess: council websites that haven't been redesigned since 2005, planning portals that require you to know the exact application reference, and no straightforward way to get notified when something new is submitted near your home.

So I built the tool I wished had existed. PlanWatch monitors over 320 local planning authority portals across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, pulling in new applications daily and making them searchable by postcode. Enter where you live, and you'll see what's being proposed nearby — extensions, new builds, demolitions, change of use, the lot. Set up alerts, and you'll never miss a consultation window again.

My name is Ben Thompson. I'm a developer and entrepreneur based in Thailand, but I've spent the better part of a decade building digital tools for the UK property market. PlanWatch is part of a small network of UK property tools I run, including EPC Checker (energy performance certificate lookups) and Great British Energy (a grants and energy efficiency directory). The common thread is making publicly available data genuinely useful for ordinary homeowners, not just industry insiders.

Where our data comes from

PlanWatch aggregates planning application data from multiple public sources:

• planning.data.gov.uk — the government's central planning data platform, maintained by DLUHC (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
• Individual LPA planning portals — we scrape directly from council planning systems including Idox Public Access, Northgate Planning Explorer, Uniform, OCELLA, and Civica
• Planning Portal — cross-referenced for application status and validation

Our scrapers run daily against 88 active council portals and growing. We currently track over 21,000 planning applications in our database, with that number growing every day as we onboard more councils. Each application is verified against the source council portal directly — we don't guess, and we don't make up data.

How the data pipeline works

Every morning, our automated scrapers check each connected council's planning portal for new applications submitted in the last 7 days. We extract the application reference, description, address, applicant details, status, and decision date where available. The data is normalised into a consistent format regardless of which portal system the council uses, then stored in our database and indexed for postcode-based search.

When you search a postcode on PlanWatch, we query our database for applications within a radius of your location, sorted by proximity. If we have real scraped data for your area, you'll see actual applications with genuine reference numbers and descriptions. For councils we haven't connected yet, we clearly indicate that data is "Coming Soon" rather than showing you fabricated results.

How our guides are written

The planning guides on PlanWatch aren't AI-generated filler. Every guide is researched against primary legislation — principally the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, the General Permitted Development Order 2015 (as amended), and Section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. We cross-reference our guidance with the Planning Portal's official guidance, and where relevant, we review appeal decisions published by PINS (the Planning Inspectorate) to understand how planning law is being interpreted in practice.

When legislation or national planning policy changes — such as updates to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) — we review and update affected guides. We aim for accuracy, but planning law is complex and varies by local authority, so we always recommend consulting a qualified planning professional for advice specific to your situation.

Data accuracy and corrections

We take data accuracy seriously. Planning data is inherently messy — councils use different systems, formats, and naming conventions — and we work hard to normalise it into something useful. But we're not infallible. If you spot inaccurate data, an outdated guide, or a council page that doesn't look right, we genuinely want to hear about it.

Email us at [email protected] with any corrections or data accuracy reports. We review every report and typically action corrections within 48 hours.

Part of the UK Property Tools network

PlanWatch sits alongside a small family of tools built to help UK homeowners navigate property-related data:

• EPC Checker — look up Energy Performance Certificates for any property in England and Wales
• Great British Energy — directory of government energy grants and efficiency schemes
• PlanWatch — planning application monitoring (you're here)

Each tool shares the same philosophy: take publicly available data that's buried in clunky government systems and make it accessible, searchable, and actually useful for the people it's supposed to serve.

Get in touch

Questions, feedback, partnership enquiries, or just want to say hello — drop us a line at [email protected]. We read everything and try to respond within a working day.