Frequently asked questions

We read your council’s planning register every day, translate each application into plain English, and email you when something is proposed near a place you care about, with the comment deadline attached. Searching and reading is free and needs no account.

How it works

No. Search, area pages, authority pages and full application detail are free and open to everyone. An account is only needed for us to watch a location and email you about it.

Create a free account, then add a watch: enter your postcode, pick a radius, and we backfill everything already on the register before watching for anything new. It takes about a minute.

Create a free account

Yes, and it is not a trial. The free Watch plan covers one location up to 500 m with a weekly round-up, forever, with no card. Reading everything on the site is free on every plan.

See pricing

All of London: the 32 boroughs, the City of London, and the two development corporations (London Legacy and Old Oak and Park Royal). Each has its own page listing exactly what we hold, so you can check before relying on it. More areas are coming soon. If you want a council outside London, tell us and we will prioritise it.

Browse what we cover

More councils are being added every month, and requests move them up the queue. Tell us which authority you need and we will let you know the moment it goes live. In the meantime a free account costs nothing to hold.

Not yet. We cover London today and are adding the rest of the UK next, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as their registers come online. Ask us about a specific council and we will tell you where it is in the queue.

On a paid plan, within minutes of it appearing on the register. Free accounts get a weekly round-up. Councils publish on their own schedule, usually daily, so that is the real floor on speed.

A point and a radius, a whole postcode area such as SE1, an entire council, or a keyword like “HMO” or “solar farm” anywhere we cover. Most services only offer the first.

Open the watch and check its filters. Tree works and condition discharges are excluded by default because they are most of any register; you can also set a minimum scale, restrict to specific application types, or require a minimum number of homes.

Three usual causes: the watch is paused, its filters are too tight, or genuinely nothing has been submitted nearby, quiet streets are quiet. Check the watch is active, widen the radius, and look at the area page to see how busy your postcode normally is.

Yes, in Settings: instant, daily or weekly, plus a preferred time for digests. Your preference is kept even if your plan caps it, so upgrading restores it without you setting it again.

Yes. Anyone can comment on any application. You do not need to have been notified, to live next door, or even to live in that council’s area.

How to object

Only material planning considerations: overlooking, loss of light, highway safety, parking, noise, design and character, heritage, trees, and drainage. Property values, loss of a private view, and who the applicant is carry no weight at all.

What counts as a valid objection

Pick your position and the grounds that apply, we suggest the ones our reading of that specific proposal points to, and we assemble a properly structured comment. It comes with square brackets for you to fill in, because councils count identical letters as a single representation.

Send it anyway. Councils are not obliged to consider a late comment, but most will accept one until a decision is actually issued. Be quick, and keep it short and specific.

Yes. Comments are published on the council’s public register, normally with your name and address. Anonymous comments are usually disregarded, so it is a trade-off rather than a setting. PlotSignal never tells anyone what you watch.

Local planning authority registers, which are public records. We normalise every council’s format into one shape, add coordinates, and keep the original reference and a link back to the source so you can always verify it.

Data sources

No. The description, reference, address and dates are exactly as the council published them. The summary, development type, size band and impact tags are ours, produced by a fixed rule set so the same wording always gives the same result. Always read the full application before acting.

Tell us the reference and the authority and we will investigate. Councils correct, withdraw and republish records, and where they have done so at source our next refresh picks it up; where they have not, we will act on a well-founded request directly.

No. A local authority search covers the property itself. PlotSignal covers the gap it leaves, what is proposed on the land around it, which is the part that surprises buyers after completion.

Checking planning before you buy

Reading is identical and free on all three. You pay for watching: Watch covers one location weekly, Signal ten locations with instant alerts and keyword watches, Radar a hundred with whole-council watches, an API and bulk export.

Compare plans

Yes, from your billing page. You keep paid features until the end of the period you have paid for, then the account reverts to the free plan rather than being deleted, nothing you set up is lost.

Nothing is deleted. Watches beyond the new limit are kept but stop matching, a radius wider than the new ceiling is capped rather than reset, and alerts slow to the cadence the plan allows. Upgrading again restores all of it.

Through Stripe. Card details never touch our servers, we store only a customer reference and your plan status.

Your email address, your name if you gave one, the places you asked us to watch, and the alerts those produced. We do not sell personal data and we do not share your watch locations with anyone.

Privacy

Ask us and we will action it. Deleting removes your watches, your alert history and your account record. You can also export your data first if you want to keep it.

Not from Settings yet, ask us and we will move it across, keeping your watches and alert history intact.

Self-service password reset is not live yet. Ask us with the address on the account and we will get you back in.