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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

You can publish your data using any of the following: - CSV - GeoJSON - GML - GeoPackage

You must include a statement to confirm that you provided the data under the Open Government Licence.

Find out more about how to publish data on your website. 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

For each dataset, your webpage must include a: - link to the endpoint URL - summary of what the data is about - 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.

Give each record a documentation-URL

Each record in your dataset needs a documentation-url, so that we can find the part of your webpage that includes the record.

Each documentation-URL must be unique. There are 2 ways that you can create a unique URL.

  1. One page per record
    Give each record its own webpage, so that the documentation-url is the full page address. For example, www.yourwebsite.gov.uk/planning/article-4-directions/smith-road.

  2. Multiple records
    List all records on a single page and add anchor link for each one. For example www.yourwebsite.gov.uk/planning/article-4-directions#smith-road.

You need to check that your publishing system supports anchor links (also called l/;fragment identifiers).

If a record is for a legal document, you need to add a document-url that links straight to the file. For example, a direction notice or order.

Examples

View example webpages showing how to publish planning data.