The UK planning data problem
There are roughly 380 local planning authorities in England, each running their own planning portal — usually one of four systems: Northgate, Idox, Uniform, or a custom build. All applications are legally required to be published publicly, but there's no single centralised database developers can query.
The closest thing is planning.data.gov.uk, a government-run platform that aggregates data from consenting councils. It's free, well-documented, and genuinely useful — but coverage is partial, filtering is limited, and there are no webhooks or alerting capabilities.
Commercial aggregators fill the gap. But they've historically been built for enterprise sales teams, not developers. That's changing — but slowly.
Glenigan
Glenigan is the most established name in UK construction intelligence. They've been tracking planning applications since the 1970s and have deep data including contractor contacts, project value estimates, and stage-of-project analysis.
For a construction sales team, Glenigan is hard to beat — you get CRM integrations, lead scoring, and enriched contact data. But for a developer who wants to run API queries programmatically, Glenigan is the wrong tool:
- No self-serve access — you need a sales call and a contract
- Pricing starts at several hundred pounds per month
- API docs are gated behind a login
- No free trial or free tier
- No webhooks
Verdict: Best for enterprise construction intelligence teams. Wrong tool for developers building applications.
Barbour ABI / Landmark Information Group
Barbour ABI was acquired by Landmark Information Group, which launched a new Planning API in early 2025. The API provides 19 unique data attributes, with data from 2017 and daily updates.
The positioning is primarily for "land and property professionals" — surveyors, developers, planners. Like Glenigan, it's enterprise-first:
- No public pricing — "contact us"
- Enterprise contracts only
- Docs behind login
- Email alerts available but no programmable webhooks
Verdict: Worth considering if you're an enterprise land/property business that needs the data built into a professional workflow. Not developer-friendly.
Searchland
Searchland is the most developer-accessible of the established players. They have public API documentation, a credit-based system, and their platform covers 23+ million planning applications going back to 1990.
The catch: base pricing starts at £195/month per license, which is expensive for a solo developer or startup. There's no free tier, and the credit system means costs can be unpredictable as you scale.
- Public API docs ✓
- Spatial search ✓
- £195+/month — no free tier
- Credit-based pricing (unpredictable at scale)
- No webhooks
Verdict: The closest competitor to PlanWire for developer use, but significantly more expensive and missing webhook support.
LandHawk
LandHawk offers a comprehensive planning database with hourly updates and claims 99% council coverage. Their spatial search capabilities are strong, and the API is genuinely robust.
Like most enterprise tools, access requires contacting sales for pricing. There's no self-serve option and no public pricing. This makes it hard to evaluate without committing to a sales process.
Verdict: Likely a strong product but requires enterprise engagement to access.
PlanWire
PlanWire was built specifically to fill the gap that the above providers leave: a developer-first UK planning API with transparent pricing, instant self-serve access, and a free tier.
- Instant API key — enter your email, get a key, start querying in 30 seconds
- Free tier — 100 requests/day, no credit card required
- Transparent pricing — £0 free / £29/mo starter / £99/mo growth
- Spatial search — find all applications within X km of any coordinate
- Webhooks — HMAC-signed POST requests when new applications match your filter
- Public docs — everything is documented at planwire.io/docs
- REST JSON — clean, predictable API with cursor pagination
The dataset covers 379 councils across England, sourced from planning.data.gov.uk and direct council portal scrapers. Coverage grows as new councils are added.
Which should you choose?
If you're a developer building a product or running automated queries — start with PlanWire. Free tier gets you up and running immediately, paid plans are predictable, and the webhook support means you can build real-time alerting without polling.
If you're a construction sales team that needs enriched lead data, contractor contacts, and CRM integration — Glenigan or Barbour ABI will serve you better despite the higher cost.
If you need the deepest historical data possible (pre-2017, going back to the 1990s) — Searchland has the broadest historical coverage, though at higher cost.
If you just want to experiment for free — planning.data.gov.uk for basic entity lookups, or PlanWire's free tier for proper REST queries with filtering.