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Designing planning and housing data
Project

Planning application submissions

Contents

Important

Cut-off for feedback May 16

From 16 May, the planning-application data-spec team will no longer proactively address new comments or feedback—see details below.

Draft specifications are now available for testing and will remain so throughout the mandating process.

These specifications are implementation-agnostic to provide flexibility for any tools or suppliers.

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

What's next

As of 16 May, the team designing the planning application data specifications will no longer be proactively responding to new comments or feedback. From this point, changes to the component specifications will only be made in response to feedback already received, or if a show-stopping issue comes to light (which we are not anticipating).

We will then begin working towards mandating the specifications as ‘approved data standards’ under the powers granted by the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 (LURA23). During this period, the specifications are not yet legally mandatory. While we expect no major changes, we cannot guarantee that the specifications will remain entirely static before formal adoption.

In response to feedback from the advisory group and drop-in sessions, we recognise that software suppliers use a variety of methods and programming languages to ingest specifications. Any defined transfer formats would likely require customisation to fit existing systems—which is standard practice. As such, we are providing the specifications in a human-readable format to support flexible implementation in whichever language or format best suits your setup.

These specifications are already available in draft form for review (Reminder: after 16 May, edits will only reflect existing feedback and no further changes will be considered unless they are critical). Testing will begin with the early adopters group, and the specifications will remain publicly accessible for anyone to view and prepare for implementation ahead of mandating.

Updates

Week beginning 28 Apr

  • The specifications are currently being reviewed by the Development management policy team.
  • We received our first pull request (PR) from the community. It fixed some typos and was very welcome!
  • We created a demo repository for an extension module - this is a space for us to experiment with how extending the specifications works.

Week beginning 21 Apr

  • We met with GLA and GMCA to discuss early (specification) adopters project and the GMCA data hub project both funded by ODP
  • We fixed some discrepancies with the supporting document structure (see issue #234)

Week beginning 14 Apr

  • We published a blog post covering the recent events and summarising how we got to this point with the draft specifications.
  • We've confirmed we are looking for the initial round of feedback on the draft specifications by 16 May.

Week beginning 7 Apr

Week beginning 31 Mar

  • We've added a few more issues based on comments from the advisory and community sessions.
  • We ran a session with a group of local planning authorities and suppliers about how they can help us test the specifications
  • We published an index specification file that includes all the modules and codelists covering all application types

Week beginning 24 Mar

  • We published a "compiled" specification for each application type and sub type.
  • We held the advisory group session on the 27th March (slides, minutes)
  • We held a community drop-in session on the 28th March (slides, video)

Week beginning 17 Mar

  • We have been grouping the issues into issues we can close right now, issues that need policy input and issues that we are parking for a later iteration
  • We have set up a discussion thread per application type - each discussion lists the components needed for the application type

Week beginning 10 Mar

  • We arranged the next sessions - these will be on the 27th and 28th of March and we will be presenting the first drafts of the specifications.
  • We have published a discussion for each of the codelists we need to support the specifications

Week beginning 3 Mar

Week beginning 24 Feb

  • We held an advisory group session on 26 Feb where we discussed numerous open issues (slides, minutes)
  • We finished an initial draft of an information model for each module/component.
  • We identified more codelists that are required to support completing an application. There is a discussion for each one.

Week beginning 17 Feb

  • We have prepared a lean coffee style workshop for the next advisory group session.
  • We have created a first draft of the information models for each component
  • We have learnt that in some cases the application type isn't the only piece of information needed to determine what modules are required (see issue #158)
  • We have started setting out the codelists needed to support the planning application specification.

Week beginning 10 Feb

  • We added a Notification of proposed works to trees in a conservation area application type to the list.
  • We have been designing the next advisory group session where we’ll be working through the open issues and discussions in a lean coffee style workshop.
  • We have started pulling together a list of planning requirements - the documents that applicants need to prepare along side their application. We opened an issue where we can continue discussing the planning requirements.
  • We started drafting a set of information models for the modules needed for Householder applications.

Week beginning 3 Feb

Week beginning 27 Jan

Week beginning 20 Jan

Week beginning 13 Jan

  • Preparing for the next advisory session - will be held on 22 Jan 2025
  • Reply to contributions on the discussion thread, specifically on different application types we could look at
  • Exploring ways to manage issues openly

Week beginning 6 Jan

Week beginning 16 Dec

Week beginning 9 Dec

Week beginning 2 Dec

  • Held the first community drop-in session
  • Fleshed out and shared a spreadsheet of components and fields that we’d like the community to use to share their thoughts on the existing 'standards'

Week beginning 25 Nov

  • Held the first advisory group meeting on the 27 November
  • Pulled together a spreadsheet with the 80+ components and 1300 fields from the analysis of the planning application forms

Week beginning 18 Nov

Week beginning 11 Nov

Start of the initiative