About the submit and update your planning data service

Creating a national index of planning data means that developers, housing associations, policy colleagues, researchers and journalists can access the data they need simply and quickly.

It means less overhead for local planning authorities and organisations, reducing the time spent preparing for data requests and freedom of information requests.

We’re working with a number of local planning authorities (LPAs) and other organisations through the Open Digital Planning community to help them submit data to our Planning Data Platform.

Go to the submit and update your planning data service.

Prepare your data

Your data does not need to be complete or perfect to start. Any data we have from you means we can start to index it and provide it on the platform. Start with what you have and improve it over time.

Datasets the service supports

Right now, the service supports:

Datasets we’re developing

We're currently testing and developing data standards for these planning considerations:

Publish data on your website

Before you submit your data, you must publish your data on a webpage on your official planning authority website, usually ending in gov.uk. Your local planning authority will always be the source of truth about your data.

Your data must be on a URL the public can access. We collect the latest data from there every day. We call this the ‘endpoint URL’.

You must link to your endpoint URL from your webpage URL.

Endpoints typically fall into 1 of the following 2 categories:

• a file hosted on your web server — these will usually be URLs which end in something like .json or .csv
• a live feed of the data from an API — these are usually hosted by your GIS (Geographic Information System) software or open data platform

Whenever your data changes, update it in the endpoint URL. Your endpoint URL must remain the same, do not change it when you make updates.

Create your webpage

The webpage must include, for each dataset:

• the link to the endpoint URL
• a summary of what the data is about
• a statement that the data is provided under the Open Government Licence

The Open Digital Planning community

If you’re part of the Open Digital Planning community, we expect you to submit the datasets that the service currently supports. Read more about what’s expected of you.

If you’re a local planning authority who is interested in becoming a member, you can join the community.

Get help

If you need any help at any stage of the process, let us know by emailing digitalland@communities.gov.uk and a member of our team will be in touch.