Guidance

Publish your development plan data

Working Draft

23 January 2026

This guidance is under development. Help us improve it and give your feedback by email.

Follow this guidance when providing your development plan data.

You must follow this approved data standard to meet the requirements of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026 and the Planning Data (England) Regulations 2026.

Local planning authorities (LPAs) must create, publish and keep a plan timetable up to date. This applies to the following plans that you create or update using the new plan-making system:

  • local plans
  • minerals and waste plans
  • supplementary plans 

Providing planning data means making it available publicly to a standard, so that anyone using services such as planning.data.gov.uk can:

  • find it
  • understand its quality, meaning and purpose
  • trust it will be accurate and maintained

Providing your development plan data

Take the following steps to provide your local plan, minerals and waste plan, and supplementary plan data:

  1. Prepare your data
  2. Check your data
  3. Publish your data
  4. Tell us about your data
  5. Keep your data up to date

Prepare your data

Start by reviewing any data we may already have about your organisation on planning.data.gov.uk using the check and provide service. This might include:

  • any data you have provided in the past
  • information found on your website
  • open data from other public sources

We treat the data you provide as being more authoritative than data we previously collected or that we find elsewhere.

You can download tabular data we have for your organisation as a CSV file from the check and provide service, then edit it using a spreadsheet or other CSV editors.

You must provide data for the mandatory fields identified.

Datasets

For local plans, minerals and waste plans, and supplementary plans you need to provide 2 datasets:

You need to provide each dataset in a separate CSV file and follow the government tabular data standard.

Field names

You can use a field name with uppercase, lowercase and any punctuation characters. For example, you can use any of the following names for the start-date field in your data

  • StartDate
  • Start Date
  • START_DATE
  • start.date

Reference values

Each dataset has a reference field. Reference values are important to help people find and link to your data. If you do not have a reference value for an item, you will need to create one that:

  • is unique within your data
  • does not change when the data is updated

A good reference is something you already use. If your reference is not unique, you can make them unique by adding the year or full date. Great references are:

  • short
  • easy to read
  • easy to pronounce and remember

Date values

All dates must be in the format YYYY-MM-DD as set out in the guidance for formatting dates and times in data.

Development plan dataset

Mandatory fields

Your development plan data must contain the following fields:

  • reference
  • name
  • dataset
  • period-start-date
  • period-end-date
  • documentation-url
  • document-url
  • entry-date

reference

Give each local plan a unique reference.

For example:

  • LP-BRX-2024
  • 34069/County-Durham-Plan
  • central-lincolnshire
  • barnet-local-plan-2021-2036

name

Use the title of the local plan document. For example:

  • County Durham Plan
  • South Oxfordshire Joint Local Plan

dataset

Enter one of the following values to show the type of development plan:

  • local-plan
  • supplementary-plan
  • minerals-plan
  • waste-plan

period-start-date

Enter the start of the plan period. This is usually just a year in YYYY format. For example:

  • 2026
  • 2027

period-end-date

Enter the end of the plan period. This is usually just a year in YYYY format. For example:

  • 2038
  • 2040

documentation-url

Enter the URL of the webpage which links to your main or core plan document.

If there are several plans listed on a single webpage, you can use an anchor link (fragment identifier) to make the documentation-url value for each plan unique.

For example:

  • https://eastcambs.gov.uk/planning-and-building-control/planning-policy-and-guidance/adopted-local-plan/local-plan
  • https://example.com/local-plans/#example-local-plan-2011
  • https://example.com/local-plans/#example-local-plan-2024

document-url

Enter the URL for the main or core plan document, which is usually a PDF file.

If you do not have a main or core plan document on the day you publish your data, leave this field blank.

For example:

  • https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2024-02/LBWF_LocalPlan_LP1_Feb2024_compressed.pdf

entry-date

Enter the date you created or modified the data.

Conditional fields

Your development plan data must also contain the following fields where they apply:

  • local-planning-authorities
  • mineral-planning-authorities
  • waste-planning-authorities
  • required-housing
  • document-count

local-planning-authorities

Enter the GSS code for the  Local Planning Authority area that this local or supplementary plan covers. For a joint local plan, enter the list of references and separate each of them by with a semi-colon.

For example:

  • E60000001
  • E60000132;E60000133;E60000135;E60000136

mineral-planning-authorities

Enter the GSS code for the  Mineral Planning Authority area that this minerals plan covers. For a joint minerals plan, enter the list of references and separate each of them with a semi-colon.

For example:

  • E47000001
  • E60000331;E60000225

waste-planning-authorities

Enter the GSS code for the  Waste Planning Authority area that this local or supplementary plan covers. For a joint waste plan, enter the list of references and separate each of them with a semi-colon.

For example:

  • E47000001
  • E60000331;E60000225

required-housing

Enter the minimum number of homes that the plan seeks to provide during the plan period.

You must provide your required-housing when you launch your consultation on your proposed local plan. You must update your required-housing when you:

  • submit your plan for examination
  • publish the examiner’s recommendations and reasons
  • publish your adopted local plan

For example:

  • 10852
  • 10012

document-count

Enter the number of documents which collectively form the plan. This field is only required for a minerals and waste plan.

Optional fields

Your development plan data may also contain the following fields:

  • notes

notes

You may provide notes on how you made this data to help users differentiate the plan from others with a similar name.

For example:

  • Barnsley's Local Plan as adopted by Full Council on 3 January 2019

Development plan timetable dataset

Your timetable must include an event-date for when you intend to meet the relevant stage of plan-making. Update the entry to include the actual date in the actual-date field when the event takes place.

For local plans, minerals and waste plans your timetable must include an entry for each of the following development-plan-event field values where applicable:

  • publish-notice-intention-commence
  • scoping-consultation-start
  • scoping-consultation-end
  • gateway-1-self-assessment
  • plan-content-evidence-consultation-start
  • plan-content-evidence-consultation-end
  • gateway-2-advice-sought
  • proposed-plan-consultation-start
  • proposed-plan-consultation-end
  • gateway-3-advice-sought
  • examination-submitted
  • adopted

If you are also creating a supplementary plan, your local or minerals and waste plans timetable must include an entry with the following development-plan-event fields where applicable:

  • publish-notice-intention-commence
  • proposed-plan-consultation-start
  • proposed-plan-consultation-end
  • examination-submitted
  • adopted

Your development plan timetable must also include rows with dates if any of the following events apply:

  • gateway-3-repeat-advice-published
  • examination-recommendations-published
  • main-modification-consultation-start
  • main-modification-consultation-end
  • examination-pause-start
  • examination-pause-end
  • additional-consultation-start
  • additional-consultation-end
  • withdrawn
  • revoked

If you repeat Gateway 3, you must include these events in your timetable:

  • gateway-3-further-advice-sought
  • gateway-3-advice-published

Mandatory fields

Your development plan timetable data must contain the following fields:

  • reference
  • development-plan
  • development-plan-event
  • event-date
  • entry-date

reference

Give each event a unique reference.

For example:

  • LP1-public-consultation
  • LP1-public-consultation-2025

development-plan

Enter the reference of the development plan which this event forms part of its timetable.

For example:

  • LP-BRX-2024
  • central-lincolnshire

development-plan-event

Enter a Development Plan Event reference for each key event or milestone.

For example:

  • publish-notice-intention-commence
  • examination-submitted
  • adopted

event-date

Enter the date when this event will happen.

entry-date

Enter the date you created or modified the data.

Conditional fields

Your development plan timetable data must also contain the following fields where they apply:

  • actual-date

actual-date

Enter the date when the timetable event happened. Leave this field blank when the event is in the future.

Optional fields

Your development plan timetable data may also contain the following fields:

  • notes

notes

Enter any notes or commentary which helps to understand this data.

Check your data

Use the check and provide service to review your data before you publish it. The service will show you how the data will appear on planning.data.gov.uk along with feedback on how you might improve your data.

Publish your data

Publishing your data consists of two parts:

  • An endpoint where the data can be downloaded from
  • A source webpage where the information contained in the data is presented on your website

Endpoint

Make your data available at a public endpoint. An endpoint is a URL from which anyone can download the data. This can be either:

  • a single file hosted on your website
  • a file hosted on another public website including GitHub

Ensure your endpoint URL is documented and linked to from a public webpage to help people easily find and download the data.

The documentation webpage for your endpoint should include a clear statement that the data is provided as open data under the Open Government Licence.

Source webpage

The source webpage is where a user can see the same information that is shown in the data. This is usually one of your existing planning policy pages on your official .gov.uk website.

It is important that the source webpage links to the endpoint documentation webpage to help users trust the authenticity of the data.

Tell us about your data

Once you have published the data, use the check and provide service to tell us where it is. This is so we can index the data and quickly make it available nationally on planning.data.gov.uk.

For each dataset, you will need to provide the:

  • source webpage URL where the information in the data is presented on your website
  • endpoint URL where you can collect the data

The service also asks for your name and email address as a point of contact in case of any issues.

Keep your data up to date

Continue to improve your data and act on the the service feedback to make sure that your data meets the specification.

We update planning.data.gov.uk with any changes to the data at all the endpoint URLs each day.

Publish your changes to the same endpoint URL. If you create a new endpoint you need to tell us about your data again.

Contact us

Email digitalland@communities.gov.uk to get help.

You can help improve the design of this and other planning data at design.planning.data.gov.uk.

Technical specifications

Development plan technical specification (23 January 2026)

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