Why planning history matters
A property's planning history is its paper trail with the local authority: every application to extend, convert, demolish or change its use, plus the council's decision on each. It matters to very different people for the same underlying reason — it reveals what you can and can't do with the building, and whether anything is wrong.
- Buyers want to know an extension was actually approved (and built to the approved plans) before they commit.
- Conveyancers and solicitors need to confirm permissions and conditions were discharged — unpermitted work is a real liability.
- Surveyors and valuers use it to assess development potential and risk.
- Homeowners and self-builders check what neighbours got approved to gauge their own chances.
- Architects and developers read it to understand a site before drawing a single line.
What "planning history" actually includes
It's more than just "did they get permission." A complete history covers:
- Applications — full, householder, outline, reserved matters, listed building consent, advertisement consent
- Decisions — approved, refused, withdrawn, or split decisions, with the decision date and any conditions attached
- Prior approvals — permitted development notifications (see our guide to permitted development rights)
- Appeals — where a refusal was taken to the Planning Inspectorate
- Enforcement — where the council took action over unauthorised works
A refused or withdrawn application isn't always bad news — but an enforcement notice or unbuilt-but-required condition is a genuine red flag worth investigating before exchange.
The slow way: one council portal at a time
The traditional route is to find the right local authority, open their online planning portal (most run Idox, Northgate or similar), and search by address. It works, but it's painful: every council's portal looks and behaves differently, search is fiddly, results are inconsistent, and if the property sits near a boundary you may need to check two authorities. For anyone doing this more than occasionally — conveyancers, surveyors, proptech teams — it doesn't scale.
The fast way: search by address or postcode, everywhere at once
PlanWire normalises planning data from every UK planning authority into one consistent format, so you can look up a property's full history with a single query — by address or postcode — without caring which council it belongs to.
curl "https://api.planwire.io/v1/applications\ ?postcode=SW1A%201AA\ &limit=50" \ -H "X-API-Key: your_api_key"
Each result returns the application reference, full address, description of works, the application type, the decision and decision date, any conditions, and a direct link back to the council portal where you can view the drawings and the formal decision notice.
Reading the results
The single most useful field is status — but councils phrase it dozens of different ways ("Permitted", "Grant", "Approve with conditions", "Refused", "PER", "REF"). PlanWire normalises these so a refusal always reads as a refusal. If you're interpreting raw statuses yourself, our breakdown of UK planning status codes explains what each one means.
When you scan a history, look for:
- Approved but unbuilt — permission may have lapsed (typically after 3 years), so it can't simply be relied upon.
- Conditions — a permission "subject to conditions" isn't fully usable until those conditions are formally discharged.
- Recent refusals — they tell you what the council won't accept here, which is gold if you're planning your own application.
- Listed building or conservation flags — these constrain what's possible and should shape expectations.
Doing it at scale
A homeowner checking one property is well served by a single lookup. But if you're a conveyancing firm running checks on every transaction, a surveyor pulling history into reports, or a proptech product enriching listings, you want this automated. The typical setup is to query PlanWire by the property's postcode or coordinates as part of your existing workflow, cache the result, and surface it in your report or CRM — no manual portal-hopping.
If you're tracking activity across a whole area rather than one address, you can also set up planning alerts so new applications land in your inbox or webhook as they're submitted.
A note on what the data can and can't tell you
Planning records show the property, the proposed works, and the council's decision — they don't include the owner's personal contact details, and they won't confirm that approved work was actually built to spec (only a site visit or building-control records do that). Treat planning history as the authoritative record of permissions, and pair it with Land Registry and building-control checks for the full picture.