We track live planning application data across dozens of UK council areas — here's what it's actually showing right now, straight from our own database.
What We're Tracking, and Why It Matters for Investors
Since March 2026, PropertyAlert has logged over 102,000 planning applications from local authority planning portals, and we're actively adding to that every day. Planning activity is one of the earliest, most reliable signals of where an area is about to change — new housing developments, regeneration schemes, transport links and mixed-use projects all tend to precede price growth by months or years, long before it shows up in Land Registry sale data.
Right now, our most active coverage sits across London and Hertfordshire council areas. In the last 30 days alone, we've logged planning activity across 15+ boroughs, with the heaviest concentrations in:
| Council area | Applications logged (last 30 days) |
|---|---|
| Redbridge | 82 |
| Watford | 51 |
| Haringey | 50 |
| Newham | 48 |
| Three Rivers | 45 |
| Barnet | 34 |
| Dacorum | 20 |
| Westminster | 19 |
| Hertsmere | 16 |
| Enfield | 15 |
Redbridge and Newham in particular stand out for volume relative to their size — both are outer-London boroughs that have seen sustained regeneration interest, and both show up repeatedly in our data as areas where planning activity is running well ahead of what a casual property search would surface.
What Kind of Applications Are Actually Being Filed
Looking at the last 90 days of applications across our tracked areas, extensions dominate by volume (355 applications), followed by conversions (118) and loft conversions specifically (86) — these are the bread-and-butter signals of an area where existing homeowners are investing in their properties rather than selling up, often an early sign of rising confidence in local values. Demolition applications (51) and formal change-of-use applications (33) are rarer but carry more weight individually — they typically signal a bigger shift, like a commercial-to-residential conversion or a site being cleared for redevelopment.
Why a Live Feed Beats a One-Off Search
Planning applications move through stages — submitted, undecided, approved, sometimes appealed — over weeks or months, and a single search only ever catches a snapshot. Our data updates continuously as councils publish new applications and update decisions, which is what makes it useful as an ongoing signal rather than a one-time check. An area that's quiet today can shift quickly once a major application clears planning committee.
Turning This Into an Investment Signal
Raw application counts are a starting point, not a verdict — a street with 20 loft-extension applications tells a different story than a street with one large residential development application. PropertyAlert classifies each nearby application as a positive, negative, or neutral price signal and combines that with local house price trend data into a single gentrification score, so you don't have to read through raw planning descriptions to work out what's actually happening in an area. For exactly how that scoring works, see how PropertyAlert turns planning applications into a gentrification signal. To set up ongoing monitoring for a specific postcode, see our guide on how to monitor planning applications near your property.