How to turn planning applications into jobs

Why a planning application is buying intent

Most lead sources catch a homeowner at the moment they start looking for a supplier. By then the project is months old: they have had the idea, argued about the budget, drawn something up, paid an architect and applied to the council. The search you are bidding on is the last step, and you are bidding on it against everyone else who noticed.

A planning application is several steps earlier and considerably harder evidence. Filing one costs money and takes weeks of effort. Nobody applies for a rear extension idly. By the time an application is validated, the household has already decided to spend, has usually decided roughly how much, and has a drawing that names the work. That is a stronger signal of intent than any search keyword, and it is published, by law, on a public register.

The gap between that publication and the first supplier phone call is the whole opportunity. On a single-storey rear extension, the bricklayer is needed almost immediately after consent, the roofer around two to four months later, and the glazier three to six months after that. If you are a window company, you are looking at a household that will need you next spring — and will start shortlisting in about four months. There is no other channel that lets you be early on purpose.

What the register does not tell you

Being honest about the gaps is what makes the rest of this usable.

• It does not tell you they will build. A meaningful share of consents are never implemented — the money falls through, the house sells, the quotes come back too high.
• It does not tell you they need you specifically. Plenty of applications arrive with a builder already appointed, and some are filed by the contractor. That is why our matching carries an explicit confidence tier rather than pretending every row is equal, and why loft and solar applications in particular are rated medium and not high.
• It does not give you a warm lead. The homeowner has not asked to hear from you. This is cold outreach against exceptionally good targeting — not an enquiry.
• It does not give you a name. Applicant names are not something we store or pass on, which is exactly why the outreach is postal and addressed to the occupier.

Anyone selling you planning data with a conversion rate attached is guessing. We do not publish one, because we have not measured one across enough trades and patches that we would stand behind it in public.

How demand windows work

A raw list of consents is close to useless — you would be mailing a roofing letter to a household eight months before the roof exists, and a kitchen letter after the kitchen is bought. What makes the register workable is turning each application into a set of dated trade opportunities.

The mechanism is a trigger table. Each application's type and description is matched against a list of triggers, and each trigger maps to the trades it implies, with a window in months and a confidence rating. A loft conversion with a rear dormer implies roofing at zero to three months, glazing at two to five, scaffolding at zero to two and skip hire at zero to two. A re-roof implies scaffolding almost immediately, and solar as an opportunistic follow-on, because a re-roof is the cheapest moment a house will ever add panels.

Four details matter more than people expect:

• Windows are measured from the expected decision, not from the application date. Councils are not fast. A window that started at validation would have you mailing while the household is still waiting to hear whether they are allowed to build at all.
• The most specific trigger wins. A description mentioning a kitchen extension is treated as a kitchen job, not as a generic extension, because the generic reading loses the timing.
• Whole categories are excluded rather than scored low. Tree works, advertisement consents, discharge of conditions, non-material amendments and reserved matters are stripped out up front. Outline consents are excluded too: the detail, and the trades, are years away.
• Weak signals are demoted, not dressed up. A lawful development certificate means somebody is checking whether they can build before committing, so the confidence drops a tier and the window shifts later. Schemes of ten or more dwellings drop to low confidence, because that work is bought through national supply chains and not by the household.

The practical upshot for you: mail the window, not the consent date. For demolition, skip hire, scaffolding and re-roofing, the window opens straight away. For windows, kitchens and landscaping on an extension project, it opens months later — and a letter that arrives in month one is a wasted stamp that also burns your one clean first impression.

The letter: what to actually send

One page, plain, no gloss brochure on the first touch. The brochure is for people who have already put their hand up; the first letter's only job is to be read and believed.

What earns it a read:

• Say how you know. Cite the planning reference and the council. This is the single most important line in the letter. Without it you are junk mail; with it you are a local firm that pays attention to what is being built nearby. It also lets the reader verify you in ten seconds.
• Match the letter to the trigger. A re-roof letter and an extension letter should not be the same letter with a word swapped. Reference the actual work: the dormer, the driveway, the kitchen-diner.
• Be specific about proof. One recent, named, nearby job beats three paragraphs of adjectives. Street or village level is enough.
• Give one clear next step and make it low commitment — a call to talk through timings, not a hard push for a survey booking on a project that has not started.
• Make it easy to say no. An opt-out address, honoured properly, costs you nothing and keeps you out of trouble.

What kills it: fake deadlines, discount countdowns, anything that implies you know their name or personal details, and any suggestion that you are connected to the council. That last one is the fastest route to a complaint, and it is an easy accident to have if the letter is written carelessly.

Timing and follow-up cadence

Single letters do not work. Neither does mailing every month until the household hates you. A window gives you a natural structure:

1. Letter one, as the window opens. The introduction, with the planning reference and the proof point.
2. Letter two, four to six weeks later. Different content, not a nudge. Something genuinely useful for someone at their stage: what tends to go wrong at this point in a build, what to check in a quote, realistic lead times for materials.
3. Letter three, near the far edge of the window. Short, direct, last touch. This is the one that catches people whose build slipped, which is most of them.

Then stop, and suppress the address so it does not reappear in a later batch. Three touches across a window is a sensible ceiling. Past that you are paying Royal Mail to annoy someone who has already chosen a supplier.

Two operational notes. First, print and post in batches rather than dribbling letters out; consistency beats volume and a monthly rhythm is easy to sustain. Second, expect nothing in month one. The first batch is a standing start, because you are catching whichever cohort happens to be at the right stage. The channel compounds: by month four you have three earlier cohorts maturing into their windows at the same time as the new one arrives.

The compliance posture

This is the part that decides whether working the register is a durable channel or a complaint waiting to happen. The line we hold, and require:

Mail only — no email, no SMS, no cold calls. Each letter should cite the planning reference and carry an opt-out address.

• Postal only. No email, no text messages, no cold calls, no matter what you can find elsewhere. Electronic marketing carries its own consent rules; addressed postal mail to an occupier does not sit in the same regime, which is precisely why the product is built this way.
• No names. Applicant names are not stored and not supplied. Letters are addressed to "The Owner/Occupier" at the property, because the thing we know about is the property and its consent, not the person.
• An opt-out on every letter, honoured on every future batch. Suppression is part of the tooling for a reason: an address that asks to be left alone must never resurface.
• One household, one letter per batch. Multiple applications on the same property do not earn multiple mailings.
• Do not imply council endorsement. You read a public register. Say that plainly if asked.

The register is published so the public can see what is being built. Working it respectfully is not just ethics — it is what keeps the channel available. This is our operating posture rather than legal advice, and you should take your own on how marketing rules apply to your business.

How to judge whether it worked

Put a tracking mechanism on the letter — a dedicated phone number, or a short quote code you ask people to mention — because otherwise everything gets attributed to word of mouth and you will conclude it did nothing.

Then judge it by cohort, not by week. The right question is how many jobs came out of the households you mailed in a given month, measured after their windows have fully closed. That can be six months of patience on an extension-driven trade. Judging a mail campaign at two weeks tells you nothing except how quickly you get bored.

Also track the cheap negatives: letters returned undelivered, and opt-outs. A rising return rate means an address quality problem worth raising with us. A rising opt-out rate usually means the letter is too pushy for how early it is.

Where the triggers land for your trade

Each trade sees a different slice of the same register, with different windows. The pages below show the real matching table for each one — the triggers, the demand windows, the confidence tiers and the reasoning printed on every row.

Window & door companies · Conservatory, orangery & garden room installers · Bricklayers & building contractors · Roofing contractors · Spray-foam removal specialists · Loft conversion companies · Kitchen companies · Landscapers & driveway contractors · Solar installers · Heat pump & heating engineers · Scaffolding firms · Skip hire & waste companies · Demolition & strip-out contractors · Tree surgeons & arborists

See all thirteen trades, check what is in your patch, and what a subscription costs →