Statutory guidance

Publish your plan data

Published 16 April 2026

Applies to England

This approved data standard relates to The Planning Data (England) Regulations 2026 which have a commencement date of 7 May 2026. You may follow this approved data standard before that date.

For plans under the legacy plan-making system  

If you are submitting your plan under the legacy system, use the create or update a local plan legacy system guidance. 

The legacy system covers plans to be adopted under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, excluding the amendments made by the LURA, and The Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026.

You must follow the approved data standard to publish your plan timetable and your housing requirement, so that you meet the requirements of the Planning Data (England) Regulations 2026. This will help you to meet the requirements of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026.

To meet the timetable requirement, you must publish both your plan dataset and plan timetable dataset. The housing requirement is part of the plan dataset.

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

You must publish each dataset separately and follow the government tabular data standard. For example, a CSV file. 

Find out more about creating your plan timetable. 

Find out more about publishing your local plan housing requirement. 

Your timetable may also need to meet additional requirements that are not set out in this data standard. For example, if you either: 

• will prepare a supplementary plan 
• have agreed, or propose to agree, to set up a statutory joint committee

How to publish your data

You can choose to use the check and provide service to help prepare, check and provide your data. This will help you meet the approved data standard.  

Follow these steps to understand what you need to do to publish your data.

1. Prepare your data

Local plans

You can use the service to download CSV files for local plans and local plan timetables. Each file contains pre-populated rows for local plans that you prepare using the new plan-making system that you can complete.

1. Find your organisation. 
2. Select the dataset that is relevant to your plan. For example, ‘local plan’.
3. Download the pre-populated CSV and make any changes or additions using a spreadsheet or other editing software.  

The CSV may include data for the legacy local plans system from: 

• data you provided in the past
• information on your website from plans under the legacy system
• open data from public sources 

You can choose to publish any data from the legacy plan-making system, but you do not have to.

Minerals and waste plans, and supplementary plans

You can create your plan or timetable data using a template.

2. Check your data meets the standard

Before your data is ready to publish, you must complete the:

Check your data to find out if it is ready to publish or if you need to make any changes. 

When your data is ready, you can publish it on your website.

3. Publish your data

You must publish your data:

• on a webpage on your official planning authority’s website - which usually ends in gov.uk
• in a format that is clear and easy to understand

You must include a statement to confirm that you provided the data under the Open Government Licence. 

Find out more about how to publish data on your website.

4. Provide your data  

After you publish, you should provide your data to the Planning Data Platform.  

You need to submit: 

• your full name  
• your work email address  
• the URL where anyone can download your data – called your ‘endpoint URL’
• the URL for your gov.uk website where you can view or select a link to view the data – called your ‘source webpage URL’

Providing your data will help to:

• maintain and improve your data quality 
• make land and housing data easier to find, use and trust

5. Update your data  

If you use the provide your data service, you only need to make changes to your data at your endpoint URL. Planning.data.gov.uk will update automatically. 

If you create a new endpoint URL, you will need to tell us about your data again. 

Find out how to keep your timetable up to date.

Meet the approved data standard 

Datasets 

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

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. 

Plan dataset 

Mandatory fields

Your plan data must contain the following fields: 

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

reference

Give each plan a unique reference. For example: 

• LP-BRX-2024
• barnet-local-plan-2021-2036
• hertfordshire-minerals-and-waste-plan
• essex-minerals-plan
• essex-waste-plan
• county-durham-supplementary-plan

For minerals and waste plans with multiple documents, give each minerals and waste plan document a unique reference.

name

Use the title of the plan. For example: 

• York Local Plan
• Plymouth and South West Devon Joint Local Plan

dataset

Enter one of the following values to show the type of plan or plan document: 

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

If your plan includes multiple types, enter the list of types and separate each of them with a semi-colon. For example: 

• minerals-plan;waste-plan
• local-plan;minerals-plan
• local-plan;minerals-plan;waste-plan

description

Enter a short description of the matters that the plan is to deal with.

period-start-date

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

• 2026
• 2030

period-end-date

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

• 2038
• 2040

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

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 document-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-2027
• https://example.com/local-plans/#example-local-plan-2027

document-url

Enter the URL for the relevant plan document, which is usually a PDF file. For example, https://eastcambs.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2024-10/Local%20Plan%20adopted%2019%20October%202023%20-%20final%20with%20cover.pdf.

entry-date

Enter the date you created or modified the data. 

Conditional fields 

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

• local-planning-authorities
• minerals-and-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 plan, enter the list of references and separate each of them with a semi-colon. For example: 

• E60000001
• E60000132;E60000133;E60000135;E60000136

minerals-and-waste-planning-authorities

Enter the GSS code for the minerals and waste planning authority area that this minerals and waste plan document or supplementary plan covers. For a joint minerals and waste plan document, 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 expects 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 plan data may also contain the notes field.

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.

Plan timetable dataset 

Record the key events in the timetable when producing your plan, these are sometimes also called ‘milestones’. 

Your timetable must include an event-date for when you intend to meet the plan-event. Find out when you need to update the entry to include the actual date in the actual-date field. 

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

• 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

For minerals and waste plans with multiple documents, your timetable must include an entry for each of the plan-event field values for each minerals and waste plan document. 

For supplementary plans, your local plan timetable or minerals and waste plan timetable must include an entry with the following plan-event field values: 

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

Your local plan timetable or minerals and waste plan timetable must also include rows with an actual-date to set out when any of the following events happen: 

• gateway-2-advice-published
• gateway-3-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-further-advice-published

Mandatory fields

Your plan timetable data must include the following fields:

• reference
• plan
• plan-event
• event-date

reference

Give each event a unique reference. For example: 

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

plan

Enter the reference of the plan for which this event forms part of its timetable. For example:

• LP-BRX-2024
• central-lincolnshire

plan-event

Enter a plan event reference for each key event or milestone. For example: 

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

event-date

Enter the date when this event will happen. For example, 2027-01-01. 

entry-date

Enter the date you created or modified the data.

Conditional fields

Your plan timetable data must also contain the actual-date field if it applies. 

actual-date

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

Optional fields

Your plan timetable data may also contain the notes field.

notes

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