Specification

Local plan

Abstract

This specification defines the contents and format of data which a planning authority or other party may use to provide headline information about one or more local plans.

Status of this specification

Working draft

Warning It is inappropriate to cite this draft document as other than a work in progress.

This document sets out the requirements for providing data in conformance to the specification which is currently under development. Providing data to this draft specification is at present optional, though encouraged.

This is a draft specification, following the standards for planning data process [design-process]. The contents of this specification are currently under development, and liable to change based on feedback.

This document places no obligations on any party to provide data in conformance to this specification.

A future version of this specification may be formally published on GOV.UK, and cited as one of a number of official data standards for the provision of planning data under the proposed Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 [LURA].

This technical specification is accompanied by guidance, examples and other tools which provide feedback to organisations creating data to this specification.

Comments and feedback on this specification may be provided on the GitHub discussion or sent to digitalland@communities.gov.uk.

Version: 3.1.0 — published 2025-10-18

See versions — See changelog

Conformance

As well as sections marked as non-normative, all authoring guidelines, diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative.

The key words MAY, MUST, NOT, and SHOULD in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals [RFC8174] as shown here.

Source documentation

The source documentation is a web page where the user should go to confirm the validity of information provided in the data.

The source documentation SHOULD be a web page accessible as [HTML] from a public URL.

Finding the information on the organisation's official website helps users check the information in the data. It increases the trust the user may place in the origin of the data, and that it is more likely to be sustained.

The source documentation SHOULD be on the offical website for the organisation.

A Local Authority or other public body should put the documentation page under their .gov.uk domain.

The source documentation MAY either contain the endpoint documentation, or link to one or more separate endpoint documentation pages.

Endpoint documentation

The endpoint documentation is a web page where a user can find a link to where they can download the data (the endpoint), along with other information relevant to a data user, such as the date the data was last updated. Every endpoint needs to be findable via a link on the source documentation page, and the endpoint documentation can be on the source page, on a separate documentation point for each endpoint, or a combination thereof.

The documentation for an endpoint SHOULD be accessible as [HTML] from a public URL.

The endpoint documentation URL SHOULD have the same URL as the endpoint documentation page.

The endpoint documentation URL MAY have the same URL as the source documentation page.

The endpoint documentation SHOULD include a hyperlink to one or more endpoints for Local plan data.

The endpoint documentation SHOULD include a hyperlink to one or more endpoints for Local plan housing number data.

The endpoint documentation MAY include a hyperlink to one or more endpoints for Local plan document data.

The endpoint documentation page SHOULD include a clear licence for reusing the data.

The data SHOULD be published as [crown-copyright] under [OGL3].

This data is © Crown copyright and available under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

The endpoint documentation page SHOULD include any further attribution a user of the data needs to provide if they copy, publish, distribute or otherwise retransmit the data.

Dataset relationships

The following diagram illustrates the datasets specified by this document, and how data in a dataset entry may reference, or be referenced by an entry in another dataset.

Datasets

Local plan

Local plans prepared by a Local Planning Authority .

The Local plan dataset SHOULD contain at least one entry for each Local plan for which the data provider is the responsible authority.

Local plan fields

Reference

Each Local plan entry MUST contain a reference field.

The Local plan reference field MUST be a reference value.

Local plan reference .

Give each local plan a reference value.

Name

Each Local plan entry SHOULD contain a name field.

The Local plan name field MUST be a text value.

Local plan name .

Use the title of the adopted local plan document.

Period start date

Each Local plan entry SHOULD contain a period-start-date field.

The Local plan period-start-date field MUST be a datetime value.

The start date of the period the plan covers .

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

Period end date

Each Local plan entry SHOULD contain a period-end-date field.

The Local plan period-end-date field MUST be a datetime value.

The end date of the period the plan covers .

Enter the end of the plan period. This is may be just the year in YYYY format.

Local Planning Authorities

Each Local plan entry MAY contain a local-planning-authorities field.

The Local plan local-planning-authorities field MUST be a text value.

Area covered by the local plan .

Enter the reference (the GSS code) for Local Planning Authority area covered by the plan. For a joint local plan, enter the list of Local Planning Authority references, each separated by semi-colon ';' character.

Documentation URL

Each Local plan entry MUST contain a documentation-url field.

The Local plan documentation-url field MUST be a URL value.

Local plan documentation page .

Document URL

Each Local plan entry MUST contain a document-url field.

The Local plan document-url field MUST be a URL value.

Local plan document .

The URL of the Source documentation page.

Entry date

Each Local plan entry SHOULD contain an entry-date field.

The Local plan entry-date field MUST be a datetime value.

Start date

Each Local plan entry SHOULD contain a start-date field.

The Local plan start-date field MUST be a datetime value.

When the plan was officially adopted .

Enter the date when the plan was officially adopted. This value should match the relevant entry for when the plan was recoreded as being adopted in the local-plan-timetable. Leave this value blank for plans which are being prepared, or haven't yet been adopted.

End date

Each Local plan entry MAY contain an end-date field.

The Local plan end-date field MUST be a datetime value.

Notes

Each Local plan entry MAY contain a notes field.

The Local plan notes field MUST be a text value.

You may provide a short description to help users differentiate the plan from others with a similar name.

Local plan housing number

Housing numbers for a Local Planning Authority in a local plan .

The Local plan housing number dataset SHOULD contain at least one entry for each Local plan housing number for which the data provider is the responsible authority.

Local plan housing number fields

Reference

Each Local plan housing number entry MUST contain a reference field.

The Local plan housing number reference field MUST be a reference value.

Local plan reference .

Give each local plan a reference value.

Local plan

Each Local plan housing number entry MAY contain a local-plan field.

The Local plan housing number local-plan field MUST be a text value.

Local Planning Authority

Each Local plan housing number entry SHOULD contain a local-planning-authority field.

The Local plan housing number local-planning-authority field MUST be a text value.

Local planning authority area .

This should be the statistical geography for the local-planning-authority area to which the housing numbers apply. See the Local Planning Authority dataset.

Required housing

Each Local plan housing number entry SHOULD contain a required-housing field.

The Local plan housing number required-housing field MUST be an integer value.

The total housing requirement (net additional housing) for the local-plan period .

Enter the amount of housing required in the local planning authority area for the local plan period.

Committed housing

Each Local plan housing number entry SHOULD contain a committed-housing field.

The Local plan housing number committed-housing field MUST be an integer value.

The amount of housing already committed for development within the local-plannning-authority area in the local-plan .

Enter the amount of housing already committed for development within the local plan area at the time the local plan was adopted.

Allocated housing

Each Local plan housing number entry SHOULD contain an allocated-housing field.

The Local plan housing number allocated-housing field MUST be an integer value.

Amount of additional housing allocated to sites within the local-planning-authority area in the local-plan .

Enter the amount of net additional housing which have been allocated to sites with the local planning authority area in the local plan.

Broad locations housing

Each Local plan housing number entry SHOULD contain a broad-locations-housing field.

The Local plan housing number broad-locations-housing field MUST be an integer value.

Amount of net additional housing expected to be delivered from broad locations for development within the local-planning-authority-area in the local plan .

Enter the amount of net additional housing which have been allocated to sites in the local plan.

Windfall housing

Each Local plan housing number entry SHOULD contain a windfall-housing field.

The Local plan housing number windfall-housing field MUST be an integer value.

The amount of additional housing expected to be delivered from windfall developments during the local plan period .

Entry date

Each Local plan housing number entry SHOULD contain an entry-date field.

The Local plan housing number entry-date field MUST be a datetime value.

Start date

Each Local plan housing number entry SHOULD contain a start-date field.

The Local plan housing number start-date field MUST be a datetime value.

End date

Each Local plan housing number entry MAY contain an end-date field.

The Local plan housing number end-date field MUST be a datetime value.

Notes

Each Local plan housing number entry MAY contain a notes field.

The Local plan housing number notes field MUST be a text value.

You may provide a short description to help users differentiate the plan from others with a similar name.

Local plan document

.

The Local plan document dataset MAY contain at least one entry for each Local plan document for which the data provider is the responsible authority.

Local plan document fields

Reference

Each Local plan document entry MUST contain a reference field.

The Local plan document reference field MUST be a reference value.

Name

Each Local plan document entry MUST contain a name field.

The Local plan document name field MUST be a text value.

Description

Each Local plan document entry MAY contain a description field.

The Local plan document description field MUST be a text value.

Local plan

Each Local plan document entry MAY contain a local-plan field.

The Local plan document local-plan field MUST be a text value.

Document types

Each Local plan document entry SHOULD contain a document-types field.

The Local plan document document-types field MUST be a text value.

Documentation URL

Each Local plan document entry SHOULD contain a documentation-url field.

The Local plan document documentation-url field MUST be a URL value.

Document URL

Each Local plan document entry MUST contain a document-url field.

The Local plan document document-url field MUST be a URL value.

Entry date

Each Local plan document entry SHOULD contain an entry-date field.

The Local plan document entry-date field MUST be a datetime value.

Start date

Each Local plan document entry SHOULD contain a start-date field.

The Local plan document start-date field MUST be a datetime value.

End date

Each Local plan document entry MAY contain an end-date field.

The Local plan document end-date field MUST be a datetime value.

Notes

Each Local plan document entry MAY contain a notes field.

The Local plan document notes field MUST be a text value.

Fieldtypes

Reference

The reference MAY be used to refer to the entity by other data.

A reference value MUST be either a [CURIE] or the reference part of a [CURIE] identifier.

A reference SHOULD be persistent. A reference SHOULD be used by the data provider to identify the same entity in the future.

A reference SHOULD NOT be used to refer to a different entity in the future.

Where a reference has been used to refer to two different entities, add a year or other text to disambiguate the references, for example use 'CA01' and 'CA01/2022' rather than just 'CA01' for two different conservation areas.

A reference SHOULD be short and meaningful to a user.

A good reference is short, meaningful and easily read out loud by a user. It should be something you already use, such as the reference number sent in letters, asked for in forms, a section reference in documents, the significant part of the URL for an entity (its "furl" or "slug"), or a fragment identifier (anchor) in your source documentation web page.

Datetime

Dates MUST conform to [ISO8601] following the [Open Standards for government guidance [formatting-dates-and-times-in-data].

A date value SHOULD be blank if it is unknown.

The date MAY just contain the year 'YYYY' if only the year is known, or 'YYYY-MM' if only the year and month is known.

Geometry

A geometry field MAY be eiher a single POLYGON or MULTIPOLYGON value.

When using Comma Separated Value (CSV), the geometry SHOULD be encoded as Well Known Text [WKT].

All points SHOULD be either in the [WGS84] (EPSG::4326) or [ETRS89] (EPSG::4258) coordinate reference system following the [Open Standards for government] guidance [exchange-of-location-point].

Boundaries provided by this dataset are intended to be used as an index. Positions calculated by the WGS84 and ETRS89 systems can currently deviate by half a metre for points within England. Survey data should be used where more precision is needed.

Coordinate values should be 6 or fewer decimal places.

Integer

Reference CSV on the web and xs:decimal

Markdown

Reference [govspeak-markdown]

URL

Reference [RFC3986] and [URL-interoperability]

Text

All text fields MUST be encoded in UTF-8 [RFC3629] following the [Open Standards for government] guidance [encoding-characters].

Historical data

Removing historical data can reduce the trust a user places in the quality of the data. There are also many uses for historical documents, data and material information in planning, such as when developing an older property, processing an appeal, and monitoring the delivery of housing on older brownfield land, and when collecting evidence for plan-making.

Entries SHOULD NOT be changed or removed from the data except to correct a mistake, or for the purposes of redacting personal or otherwise sensitive information.

An entity SHOULD be updated by adding another entry to the data with the same reference and a newer entry-date.

Entries SHOULD be ordered within a dataset by the entry-date value, with older entries appearing before later entries.

The end-date field should be used to indicate when an entity is no longer applicable.

Data file formats

Data MUST be provided in at least one of the following file formats:

The preferred format for geospatial data is GeoJSON.

Tabular data SHOULD be provided as (CSV) [RFC4180] following the [Open Standards for government] guidance [tabular-data-standard].

Field names

The case and punctuation used in field names is insignificant, meaning 'StartDate', 'Start Date' 'START_DATE' and 'start.date', are all valid ways of naming the 'start-date' field.

A field name MAY be treated as being case insensitive.

A non-alphanumeric character in a field name MAY be ignored.

Evolution

Guidance for how the specification may evolve in a similar way to HTML. Whilst the specification document is versioned, the data may evolves following three principles:
  1. The data may contain additional fields in the future version.
  2. Processors of this version should ignore any fields they aren't expecting.
  3. Fields in this specification may be deprecated in a future version, but won't be removed, or change their semantic meaning.

Extensibility

Guidance for how we support local variance and collecting data from existing sources.

Endpoint

Your data must be on a URL the public can access. We collect the latest data from there every day. We call this the ‘endpoint URL’.

Endpoints typically fall into 1 of the following 2 categories:

  • a file hosted on your web server — these will usually be URLs which end in something like .json or .csv
  • a live feed of the data from an API — these are usually hosted by your GIS (Geographic Information System) software or open data platform

Whenever your data changes, update it in the endpoint URL. Your endpoint URL should remain the same, do not change it when you make updates.

Explain support of periodic dated publications, and how we support feeds of data for collecting large datasets which change frequently.

Examples

Complete examples

Security and privacy considerations

There is a risk of people's names or other personally identifiable information appearing in the data, in particular notes, description and other text fields. It is the responsibility of the data provider to review and redact such information before publication.

The [OGL3] licence does not cover personal data in the Information.

The data MUST NOT contain any personal or sensitive information, unless explicitly required by this specification, or legislation.

Colophon

This document is © Crown Copyright and available under the Open Government Licence version 3 licence.

References

Normative references

[RFC2119]
Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels. IETF Best Current Practice. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119
[RFC8174]
Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in [RFC2119] Key Words. IETF Best Current Practice. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8174
[RFC3629]
UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646. IETF Internet Standard. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3629
[RFC4180]
Common Format and MIME Type for Comma-Separated Values (CSV) Files. IETF Informational. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4180
[RFC7946]
The GeoJSON Format. Proposed Standard. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7946
[RFC3339]
Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps. IETF Proposed Standard. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3339
[RFC3986]
IETF Standard. Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986
[URI-Fragment]
Section 3.5 of [RFC3986] Fragment Identifier of a URI https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-3.5
[tabular-metadata]
Metadata Vocabulary for Tabular Data. W3C Recommendation. https://www.w3.org/TR/2015/REC-tabular-metadata-20151217/
[tabular-data-model]
Model for Tabular Data and Metadata on the Web. W3C Recommendation. https://www.w3.org/TR/2015/REC-tabular-data-model-20151217
[CURIE]
CURIE Syntax 1.0 A syntax for expressing Compact URIs. W3C Working Group Note. https://www.w3.org/TR/2010/NOTE-curie-20101216/
[GML]
Geography Markup Language (GML). Open Geospatial Consortium standard (ISO 19136-1:2020). https://www.ogc.org/standards/gml
[KML]
OGC KML 2.3. Open Geospatial Consortium standard (12-007r2). http://www.opengis.net/doc/IS/kml/2.3
[Geopackage]
OGC Geopackage 1,4 Open Geospatial Consortium standard (12-128r19). http://www.opengis.net/doc/IS/geopackage/1.4
[WGS84]
National Imagery and Mapping Agency, "Department of Defense World Geodetic System 1984: Its Definition and Relationships with Local Geodetic Systems", Third Edition, 1984. The code for this standard in the European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG) Registry is [EPSG::4326]. https://nsgreg.nga.mil/doc/view?i=4085
[ETRS89]
The European Terrestrial Reference System 89 (ETRS89) The code for this standard in the European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG) Registry is [EPSG::4258]. http://etrs89.ensg.ign.fr/
[WKT]
OGC Well-known text (WKT) as defined by ISO/IEC 13249-3:2016. https://www.iso.org/standard/60343.html
[ISO8601]
Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times", ISO 8601:1988(E), International Organization for Standardization, June, 1988.
[OGL3]
Open Government Licence for public sector information. Version 3. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
[crown-copyright]
Crown copyright. Section 163 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 as works made by officers or servants of the Crown in the course of their duties. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/re-using-public-sector-information/uk-government-licensing-framework/crown-copyright/

Informative references

[LURA]
Levelling-up and Regeneration Act. Originated in the House of Commons, Session 2022-23. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/55/enacted
[process]
Ministry for Housing, Communities & Local Government planning data standards design process (service under development). https://design.planning.data.gov.uk
[govspeak-markdown]
How to publish on GOV.UK: Govspeak Markdown. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-publish-on-gov-uk/markdown
[open-standards-for-government]
Government Digital Service and Central Digital and Data Office. Open standards for government
[encoding-characters]
Encoding characters Open Standards for Government. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/cross-platform-character-encoding-profile
[persistent-resolvable-identifiers]
Persistent resolvable identifiers. Open Standards for Government. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/persistent-resolvable-identifiers
[formatting-dates-and-times-in-data]
Formatting dates and times in data. Open Standards for Government. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/date-times-and-time-stamps-standard
[publishing-government-documents]
Publishing government documents. Open Standards for Government. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/viewing-government-documents
[exchange-of-location-point]
Exchange of location point. Open Standards for Government. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/exchange-of-location-point
[tabular-data-standard]
Tabular data standard. Open Standards for Government. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/recommended-open-standards-for-government/tabular-data-standard
[using-csv]
Using CSV file format. Central Digital and Data Office guidance. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-csv-file-format
[csv-on-the-web]
CSV on the Web: A Primer. W3C Working Group Note. https://www.w3.org/TR/tabular-data-primer/
[EPSG::4326]
World Geodetic System 1984 [WGS84] EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset. https://epsg.io/4326
[EPSG::4258]
The European Terrestrial Reference System 89 [ETRS89] EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset. https://epsg.io/4326
[GDAL]
GDAL. Open Source Geospatial Foundation. https://gdal.org/
[TAB]
MapInfo TAB format. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapInfo_TAB_format
[Shapefile]
ESRI Shapefile format. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefile
[ZIP]
ZIP format. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_(file_format)
[HTML]
WHATWG HTML. Living Standard. https://html.spec.whatwg.org/
[URL-interoperability]
WHATWG URL. Living Standard. Interoperability of URL with URI and IRI values. https://url.spec.whatwg.org/

Previous versions

These specifications are living documents. When we make material changes to the data structure we update the version number.

Previous versions of the local-plan specification are: