Scraping 241 UK council planning portals – 2.6M decisions so far
Summary
Public planning data is technically public but scattered behind 241 separate portals, making comprehensive aggregation challenging. The author scraped 241 councils to compile 2.6 million decisions, using multiple scrapers to handle varying portal tech and defenses. Key findings include an 88% national approval rate with wide variance by ward, and a troubling increase in targets missed: 36.5% of 2025 decisions were past the 8-week target, with Guildford at 66% over target and 13.3 weeks on average.