plota.co.uk

Plota holds UK planning applications from every planning authority in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, updated daily, each record linked to the official council register. Finding applications: search_applications is the tool to reach for. Use it whenever any part of the question is a filter you can name - a place, a council, a category, a stage, a date range, a number of homes - and combine as many as you have. search is the fallback for a phrase you cannot break into filters (a building by name, a street, a council reference). A reference query checks exact references across the records your plan includes before text mentions. References can occur in more than one council; check the authority. get_application returns one live record in full by id; fetch accepts the document ids from search, including historical records. Resolve a council name with find_council, and read category slugs from list_categories. Everything about one property or site in a single call (what is at it, around it, what constrains it, how its council decides): investigate_site. Around a point: nearby_applications. What constrains a site (flood zone, conservation area, listed buildings, green belt and so on): site_constraints. How a council decides: decision_stats. Appeals: search_appeals. Consents about to lapse: expiring_consents. The family an application belongs to: associated_applications. The documents on its council file (plans, statements, decision notice): application_documents. Every record returned is the complete record Plota holds for that application: proposal, address, status, decision, dates, category and links. Do not search the web for the same application; if a field is absent, say Plota does not hold it. Cite the url field (the Plota page) as the source for anything taken from a record. On a record, status is the council's own wording and can lag; stage is the normalised state (pending, approved, refused, withdrawn) and decision carries the determination and its date. When they disagree, go by stage and decision. A big scheme is many records: the substantive one has procedure full or outline, and reserved matters, amendments and discharge of conditions hang off it (associated_applications). For "major development" questions filter by procedure, category new-homes and dwelling_count rather than reading one record. Worked example: "50-home schemes in Camden this year" is find_council("Camden") then search_applications with council=camden, min_dwellings=50 and date_from - not a free-text search. "What happened to the Battersea Power Station application" is search, because the phrase is a place name rather than a set of filters. Which field to trust: stage (normalised) over status (the council's own wording); decision.outcome for what was decided; dwelling_count is the number of homes the application would provide as stated in its text, null where none is stated (so a null is unknown, not zero); floorspace_sqm likewise; procedure separates substantive applications (full, householder, outline) from paperwork (amendment, discharge, reserved-matters); commercial is true or false once the commercial classification has read the record and null until it has, never a guess; commercial_work says what kind of commercial change it is; major_development is true for a major development in the legal sense (10 or more homes, 1,000 square metres, a site of 1 hectare, minerals or waste), false when it is not, and null when the text cannot settle it, and search_applications takes major=1 for major schemes (major=all adds condition discharges and amendments on them); committee is the newest planning committee decision (outcome, meeting_date, committee, url to its committee page) or null, and committee=1 finds applications decided at committee. Categories lean towards inclusion: a category on a record means the application may concern that subject, and an application can carry several, so treat categories as a wide net for finding things and confirm from the description when precision matters. Plota would rather over-categorise than miss a match. Applicant and agent names are off by default: they draw on the account's monthly contact allowance, so pass include_contacts true (get_application, search_applications, nearby_applications, alert_matches, create_export) only when the user asks who applied or who the agent is. The text of a result is a compact summary, one record per line; the full record is in the structured content of the same reply, so there is no need to fetch it again. Results carry a next_cursor for paging. If a search returns nothing, keep the place and widen the date range first, then drop the keyword; a council slug instead of a postcode district keeps the area while widening it. A plan-gated response says which plan unlocks it.

Plota holds UK planning applications from every planning authority in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, updated daily, each record linked to the official council register. Finding applications: search_applications is the tool to reach for. Use it whenever any part of the question is a filter you can name - a place, a council, a category, a stage, a date range, a number of homes - and combine as many as you have. search is the fallback for a phrase you cannot break into filters (a building by name, a street, a council reference). A reference query checks exact references across the records your plan includes before text mentions. References can occur in more than one council; check the authority. get_application returns one live record in full by id; fetch accepts the document ids from search, including historical records. Resolve a council name with find_council, and read category slugs from list_categories. Everything about one property or site in a single call (what is at it, around it, what constrains it, how its council decides): investigate_site. Around a point: nearby_applications. What constrains a site (flood zone, conservation area, listed buildings, green belt and so on): site_constraints. How a council decides: decision_stats. Appeals: search_appeals. Consents about to lapse: expiring_consents. The family an application belongs to: associated_applications. The documents on its council file (plans, statements, decision notice): application_documents. Every record returned is the complete record Plota holds for that application: proposal, address, status, decision, dates, category and links. Do not search the web for the same application; if a field is absent, say Plota does not hold it. Cite the url field (the Plota page) as the source for anything taken from a record. On a record, status is the council's own wording and can lag; stage is the normalised state (pending, approved, refused, withdrawn) and decision carries the determination and its date. When they disagree, go by stage and decision. A big scheme is many records: the substantive one has procedure full or outline, and reserved matters, amendments and discharge of conditions hang off it (associated_applications). For "major development" questions filter by procedure, category new-homes and dwelling_count rather than reading one record. Worked example: "50-home schemes in Camden this year" is find_council("Camden") then search_applications with council=camden, min_dwellings=50 and date_from - not a free-text search. "What happened to the Battersea Power Station application" is search, because the phrase is a place name rather than a set of filters. Which field to trust: stage (normalised) over status (the council's own wording); decision.outcome for what was decided; dwelling_count is the number of homes the application would provide as stated in its text, null where none is stated (so a null is unknown, not zero); floorspace_sqm likewise; procedure separates substantive applications (full, householder, outline) from paperwork (amendment, discharge, reserved-matters); commercial is true or false once the commercial classification has read the record and null until it has, never a guess; commercial_work says what kind of commercial change it is; major_development is true for a major development in the legal sense (10 or more homes, 1,000 square metres, a site of 1 hectare, minerals or waste), false when it is not, and null when the text cannot settle it, and search_applications takes major=1 for major schemes (major=all adds condition discharges and amendments on them); committee is the newest planning committee decision (outcome, meeting_date, committee, url to its committee page) or null, and committee=1 finds applications decided at committee. Categories lean towards inclusion: a category on a record means the application may concern that subject, and an application can carry several, so treat categories as a wide net for finding things and confirm from the description when precision matters. Plota would rather over-categorise than miss a match. Applicant and agent names are off by default: they draw on the account's monthly contact allowance, so pass include_contacts true (get_application, search_applications, nearby_applications, alert_matches, create_export) only when the user asks who applied or who the agent is. The text of a result is a compact summary, one record per line; the full record is in the structured content of the same reply, so there is no need to fetch it again. Results carry a next_cursor for paging. If a search returns nothing, keep the place and widen the date range first, then drop the keyword; a council slug instead of a postcode district keeps the area while widening it. A plan-gated response says which plan unlocks it.