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Planning applications for housing are some of the strongest signs that a field may be built on. Here’s how we find them and place them.

Where they come from

Every council in England keeps a public planning register. We read councils’ registers every day, mostly from their own online planning portals, and take the facts of each application: its reference, address, what was asked for, the dates and the decision. No documents or drawings are taken. Every application links back to the council’s own page, which is the official record. You can see which councils we read, and what we hold for each, on the councils pages. Where we don’t yet read a council’s register, the report says so. See Coverage.

What counts

A report looks at housing applications from the last 15 years, on the field and within 1 km of it.
  • On the field: an application counts as on the field when its site covers a fair share of the field. Touching the edge isn’t enough.
  • Nearby: the deep report shows the applications within 1 km on a map, under Planning nearby.
On the field, a live or pending housing application strongly raises the score, a refusal raises it (refusals are often followed by a revised scheme or an appeal), and steps towards an application, such as a screening or scoping request, raise it too. An appeal allowed on the land next door in the last 5 years also raises it. See How the score works.

How we place an application on a field

Councils seldom publish the boundary of a site, and fields have no postcode. So we place each application in the best way we can, in this order:
1

The council's own location

Where the council publishes the site’s boundary, or a point for the site, we use it.
2

The postcode in the address

Otherwise, we place it by the postcode in its address. For land, that postcode is often the house next door.
3

The words of the address

An address like “Land north of Mill Lane, Testford” names a road, a side of it and a town. That’s often enough to find the field: the open land on that side of that road at that town. We do this for schemes of several homes on land. When one to three fields fit, the application is placed on them. When more fit, we leave it where it was rather than guess.
When an application on a field was placed by its postcode or from its address, the report says so, and quotes the address it was placed from. A location we worked out ourselves only counts on open land, so it can’t take in houses and gardens.

New applications since a report

We keep reading registers after a report is made. When we’ve found housing applications within 1 km since a report was checked, it says so at the top, for example “2 new planning applications nearby since this check”. They won’t always change the score, but checking again takes them into account.