Skip to main content
Designing planning and housing data

BETA This is a new service - your feedback will help us to improve it.

Project

Planning application submissions

MHCLG Digital Planning are developing a set of open, reusable data specifications to underpin planning applications. These will make sure the current templates are underpinned by data.

The specifications will define the structure and format of data that is required when submitting a planning application based on the national legislation in place.

Our intended outcomes are to:

  • improve interoperability, accessibility and understanding
  • enable integration with existing datasets (for example land use, and infrastructure)​
  • foster collaboration among government bodies, developers, planners, software providers​ and everyone else
  • improve data flow, quality, consistency and transparency in the planning process

We have a challenging timeline to deliver specifications by the end of March 2025. In order for this to be feasible we are aiming for the minimum viable specifications that underpin the current national system.

We are doing this work in the open. To help us we brought together 2 groups:

  • Advisory group - this group consists of a mix of people from industry including software providers, government bodies, LPAs and other interest groups
  • Community group - this group consists of everyone else interested in planning applications and the work we are doing to develop data standards, and is open to all LPAs

Events timeline

To view the history of this project in more detail, visit our weeknotes page.

Blog post published outlining the next stages for submissions and how we will kick off research into decisions.

Trackers developed to help community navigate github

Collated feedback from various channels into a tracker

Call for feedback closed

Get involved validating the baseline planning application data specification blog published

Community drop-in

We summarised what was discussed in the last advisory group and ran through the first draft of the specifications (slides, video).

Advisory group

We ran through the first draft of the specifications (slides, minutes).

Published the list of modules required for each application type, including sub-types where applicable.

Community drop-in

We ran a lean coffee style session with the community to answer questions and resolve issues relating to the applications (recording)

Advisory group

We ran a lean coffee style session with the advisory group to answer questions and resolve issues relating to the applications (slides, minutes).

Started setting out the codelists needed to support the planning application specification.

Started pulling together a list of planning requirements - the documents that applicants need to prepare alongside their application.

Community drop-in

We ran a session to outline how we were planning to use the form analysis and community feedback to produce the information models (slides, video).

Advisory group

We ran a session to outline how we were planning to use the form analysis and advisory group feedback to produce the information models (slides, minutes).

Event to demo analysis of planning application forms

A spreadsheet with the 80+ components and 1300 fields that make up planning application forms is shared (slide deck, video of session).

Blog post published outlining how we work in the open to build a specification

First community drop-in

Outlining the role of the community group in steering our development of planning application submission specifications.

First advisory group

Outlining the role of the advisory group in steering our development of planning application submission specifications.

The planning application types we’ll be looking at first are shared

A blog post is published to set out this piece of work

Started the initiative

Useful links