Planning Data MCP Server

Planning Data (DLUHC)

Official England planning and housing data from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities. No auth required.

Data Model

• Datasets — Over 100 dataset types (conservation-area, listed-building, brownfield-land, green-belt, etc.). Each has a slug, name, description, entity count, and theme.
• Entities — Individual planning records. Each entity has a numeric ID, dataset, name, reference, organisation-entity, geometry (WKT), point (WKT), and various dates.
• Organisations — Local planning authorities and other bodies with entity IDs.

Key Query Patterns

• Location search: Pass latitude + longitude to find entities whose geometry intersects that point. Combine with dataset to filter.
• UPRN search: Pass a UPRN via the q parameter to find entities for a specific property.
• Spatial queries: Use geometry_entity with a known entity ID (e.g. an LPA) plus geometry_relation (within, intersects) for area searches.
• Pagination: Use limit and offset. Response includes links.next, links.prev for navigation. count gives total results.
• Field selection: Use field to limit which fields are returned (reduces response size).

Common Datasets

• conservation-area — Areas of special architectural/historic interest
• listed-building — Listed buildings with grade (I, II*, II)
• brownfield-land — Previously developed land suitable for redevelopment
• green-belt — Green belt land designations
• article-4-direction-area — Areas with restricted permitted development rights
• flood-risk-zone — Flood risk zone designations
• tree-preservation-zone — Tree preservation orders
• local-planning-authority — 337 LPAs in England
• planning-application — Planning applications (data still growing)

Gotchas

• No /api/ prefix: Endpoints are at root (/entity.json, /dataset.json), not /api/entity.json.
• Extensions required: Always use .json extension on endpoints.
• Multi-value params: dataset and field accept multiple values (pass as list).
• Geometry responses: Can be very large (full WKT polygons). Use field parameter to exclude geometry when not needed.
• Absence ≠ no constraints: Missing results may mean data isn't available for that area yet.