Local planning applications: free data, but hard to collate.. until now
We haven’t focussed much on local government so far in this campaign, because it has to be said that many local councils do pretty good work in terms of making data available – possibly because they’ve often, in the past, been required to do so.
Planning applications, for example, are generally available on the web. The problem is finding out whether one in your area will affect you, because if it’s a few streets away you might care about it, but won’t receive a letter telling you about it.
Which drove Richard Pope to write Planningalerts.com (note you need the “www”, as in the link; the http://planningalerts.com site is just a placeholder). It took him five days over Christmmas, but he reckons the template – which uses a screen scraper – can be applied very widely. So although he’s only got 41 or so councils hooked up, the other 300 or so should be quite easy to add, because there are a limited number of software packages used by councils to put planning data online.
Pope’s idea: you put in your postcode and email, and the site will contact you when something is applied for in your area.
Simple? Yes (by computing standards). Clever? We think so. Could be done by government? Well, it sort of is – except at much more expense, and put into the hands of a commercial company (Emap) which says it retains the copyright on the data it offers through the National Planning Application Register.
In Don’t panic: we’ll email if someone plans to demolish your house, today’s Guardian Technology explains what Pope would like (an API/XML feed from councils that would obviate the need for screen-scraping).
The irony is that government already offers a similar service to search for planning applications through its national planning portal at planningportal.gov.uk. But rather than five days, it has taken a year to build; it doesn’t send out proactive alerts; and a formidable copyright notice says that the National Planning Application Register is copyright of a commercial company, Emap Glenigan (whose website is used for the searches).
By contrast, Pope hasn’t worried much about copyright: “This information should be available to all.”
We’ve got nothing against Emap Glenigan using the same data that’s widely available – but it’s everyone’s, not Emap’s.
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- Could a surcharge on planning applications fund free data from Ordnance Survey? (1 April 2008; score: 50.31%)
- GreenAmps fights OS and HMSO over use of map data (22 January 2008; score: 35.84%)
- Infoworld writes on Free Our Data campaign; know about address data? (14 April 2006; score: 33.25%)
- Paying twice for data? Through your council, you might be paying EIGHT times (21 March 2006; score: 29.16%)
- Islington: you want a map? You'll have to pay (24 March 2009; score: 28.08%)
January 25th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
[...] Today the Guardian profiles Planning Alerts, in part of the Free Our Data Campaign. [...]
January 25th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Nice article, thank you. I had been thinking about these issues after researching Weaver House in the East End, and got involved with planningalerts.com after meeting richard.
You might be interested to read more about Weaver House..
http://brainoff.com/weblog/2006/11/22/1207
January 25th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Most of the councils seem to provide far more information including access to all the correspondence involved which seems like a great iodea and very proactive and “open government” of them.
http://www.ukplanning.com
January 25th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
The alert service is a neat idea. However isn’t the point that local government is making this and a lot of other data accessible (free) on their web sites. If you want to find about stuff happening in your area surely the LA web site is the place to go. Scraping or RSS feeds might not make all of the data available.
A further issue could be the uses that users might wish to make of the data, an informal aggregator could not be held responsible for providing incomplete or inaccurate data whilst a LA could (I think, lawyers?)
If the National planning register has been collated by EMAP by accessing publicly available information and then reselling it to people willing to buy it rather than go to the source where it is available for free then isn’t that just the kind of free enterprise that FOD has been advocating?
January 25th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Steven, we’re heartily approving of local authorities making so much information available.
It’s great! And it’s just how it should be.
We’re not talking about just RSS feeds, but XML APIs. If LAs provided those (no compunction, but it would help everyone) .. true, an informal aggregator can’t be held accountable. But that’s why LAs are LAs, an informal aggregators are just that. Not sure I see your point.
We don’t know if the NPR is every authority’s information. It’s certainly not got mine – an application from 9 days ago is on my LA’s site but produces no results on the NPR. That’s where an API/XML feed would make a difference.
We’re not objecting to EMAP using the data – yes, it’s a commercial use. But to be honest, that would count as a pretty straight repackaging – hardly the vigorous commercial imagination one would hope for. People like theyworkforyou repackage the Houses of Parliament. If it were a commercial service, you’d think it clever. The EMAP one I think of as.. uninspired. Maybe they should hire Richard Pope?
January 26th, 2007 at 11:25 am
[...] Now, with some talk about people in London wondering about radioactivity beneath a potential Olympic site, wouldn’t we all be glad of a similar XML file here? (This is the point I was making to Steven Feldman in the comments of the previous post: while it’s good to have websites with data, what makes the whole system mesh is XML feeds, so computer can talk to computer, which can be controlled by person who filters or decides what to cross-correlate; not just making data available on a website to someone who has to laboriously cross-match sites together. The latter is web 1.0; the former, web 2.0.) [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Robert Pope’s Planning Alerts site is to the Government’s Planning Portal what the Arctic Monkeys are to Cliff Richard. It’s a quick and cheap Web 2.0 way to deliver an innovative alert and geographic information service to benefit citizens, but it has its limitations.
Planning Alerts works but postcodes are not that smart, and limit the user to only being informed of things close to addressables – what if I have a favourite beauty spot, beach or plot of land I wanted to be kept informed about? With access to other datasets, it could be turned into a more advanced geographic information system (GIS) and something really neat.
But it goes some way to demonstrate the huge potential of modern mapping technology and how it will continue to become part of our everyday lives.
James Thompson
Local Government Strategist, ESRI (UK)
January 28th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
James, what on earth do you mean by that comparison??
I’d go to an Arctic Monkeys gig – I’d never go to Cliff Richard (not even @Wimbledon). Or are you saying that the Planning Portal isn’t cool? No argument there.
Good point, though, that beauty spots won’t have postcodes, so it becomes tough to watch what’s happening there. Yes, better datasets – or even, as argued above, APIs or XML feeds from local authorities that anyone can tap into. Let the best tapper-in win.
January 29th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Charles, the nub of the Arctic Monkeys analogy was that their use of MySpace / online communities (enabled by technology) was about low cost/DIY and direct joining up between music consumers and music creators – without the need for expensive infrastructure building. In much the same way as MySociety with the use of Web 2.0/mashups have delivered access to national planning information without the need, or expensive of the planning portal. Both could be argued as amateurish, built for and by enthusiasts and not being fit for professional uses (as in Steven Feldman’s comments) – but both show what can be done much more nimbly through using new technology an a new approach.
James Thompson
Local Government Strategist, ESRI (UK)
February 8th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
@ Raymond Calitri & Steven Feldman :
Agreed some councils do an OK job of publishing the data but:
1) It’s all locked up and licenced; there are loads of cool things that people could do with the data given it in a raw format or a nice APi
2) It’s all copyrighted so you are pretty much breaking the law if you do anything more than print a page out
3) They hide the data away under pages of *long* disclaimers. How many people you reckon make it through this: http://www.wycombe.gov.uk/publicAccessPlanning.asp
4) Peoples’ lives don’t conform to council boundaries. e.g I live on the border of 2 parliamentary constituencies, 2 postcode districts, 4 wards and 2 councils! So people have to check different sites. The idea of planningalerts.com is to simplify this.
5) *This is the most important IMO* people only visit council websites if they *already know about an application* (e.g. if your next door neighbour was going to knock her house down). PlanningAlerts.com aims to let people know about things that don’t directly affect them, but might still be of interest. e.g. the old pub a few streets away that is being converted into flats
6) It’s [council sites - site ed] mostly presented in old school html. Very little accessibility support etc.