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Planning and housing data in England

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Publish data on your website

Publish your data

You must publish your data:

  • on a webpage on your official planning authority's website - which usually ends in gov.uk
  • in a format that is clear and easy to understand

Provide your data

After you publish, you should provide your data to the Planning Data Platform.

You need to submit:

  • your full name
  • your work email address
  • the URL where anyone can download your data - called your endpoint URL
  • the URL for your gov.uk website where you can view or select a link to view the data - called your source webpage URL

Each URL must be:

  • accessible to the public
  • hosted on a server that does not block access due to set permissions

We automatically collect the latest data from your endpoint URL every day, you do not need to provide anything again.

Your local planning authority is the source of truth for the data.

Hosting your data

Endpoints are usually either a:

  • file hosted on your web server - like URLs that end in .json or .csv
  • live data feed from an API - hosted by your Geographic Information System (GIS) software or open data platform
Help with providing data using an ArcGIS data layer

An ArcGIS data layer URL usually looks like this:

https://maps.example.gov.uk/arcgis/rest/services/Planning/LocalPlans/FeatureServer/0

This URL is made up of:

  • the organisation's website (maps.example.gov.uk)
  • the ArcGIS REST services path (/arcgis/rest/services)
  • the name of the service (Planning/LocalPlans)
  • the type of service (for example FeatureServer or MapServer)
  • a number that identifies the layer within the service (/0)

You only need to make changes to your data at your endpoint URL. Do not change your endpoint URL 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

Within your endpoint, you will need a documentation-url for each record in your dataset.

The documentation-url is the URL of the specific section of your webpage that introduces each record - for example, a particular Article 4 Direction or conservation area. Each record must have its own unique URL.

There are two ways to do this:

  • One page per record: each record has its own webpage. The URL for each record is its full-page URL, for example yourwebsite.gov.uk/planning/article-4-directions/smith-road.
  • Multiple records on one page: all records are listed on a single page, with an anchor link for each one, for example yourwebsite.gov.uk/planning/article-4-directions#smith-road. Your publishing system will need to support anchor links (fragment identifiers) for each record.

Where your data includes a link to a legal document such as a direction notice or order, you should also provide a document-url pointing directly to that file.

See example webpages showing how to publish planning data for patterns you can follow, including examples of how the documentation-url works for each approach.